An Interview with 2012 Tanaka Award Winner Nick Turiano
by Sara Weston
What is your most exciting discovery?
I’ve actually told this story many times, but it is worth repeating because it still makes me laugh today. During my first few weeks of graduate school I had a meeting with my mentor, Daniel Mroczek, to discuss how I wanted to focus my research. Totally green and already overwhelmed with having to decide my research future during the first week or so of graduate school, I started talking about how certain personality traits were risk factors for poor health while others were protective factors. I asked my mentor what happens if someone exhibited both traits that were risk factors and others that were protective factors. He almost jumped out of his seat with joy, which actually isn’t strange because Dan is such an excitable person anyway! He was thrilled with my question like a father is thrilled with his child’s first drawing. Dan exclaimed that I had asked about an important area of personality psychology—moderation—interacting personality traits when predicting health behaviors and outcomes. Although Dan was proud of my foresight, little did he know that his “clever” grad student left that meeting to go google what “moderation” was. I had no idea! Soon enough I was running interaction models and finding evidence of “healthy neuroticism” where the negative effects of high neuroticism are subdued in the face of high levels of conscientiousness. One very basic conversation early in my career has led to some very interesting findings that myself and others are starting to explore in greater depth.
If you had to pick a high point in your career so far, what would it be and why?
The high point of my career is really a toss-up between winning the Tanaka Award and winning a university-wide graduate student teaching award while I was at Purdue University. When I applied for both of these awards, I really didn’t think I had a chance of winning. So when I received emails that I had actually won, I was just shocked and humbled. I almost wanted to respond and say, “Are you sure it was me?” I was just humbled with both of these awards and in a way that makes me want to work harder in both research and teaching. If I don’t continue to advance the field of personality psychology and effectively teach the next generation of students, than I don’t think I deserve these awards.
What about a low point?
Fortunately, there haven’t been many low points in my career. Yes, I’ve had some strongly worded manuscript rejections basically calling me an idiot, but that’s ok because that’s what it is like to be an academic. However, reflecting on job search gets my anxiety levels through the roof! In graduate school I had a great mentor, I took such a variety of classes, independently taught, published several manuscripts, presented at many conferences, fostered great relationships with more senior collaborators, and even did a post doc for additional training in psychophysiology. So I was eager to apply to jobs and, although I got many interviews and they went really well, I still don’t get the jobs. I normally sleep like a rock for 9-10 hours a night but during the job search I would often lay awake at night pondering what I could have done differently so I would get a job. Could I have taken more classes, gotten a grant, published just one more manuscript, included a different study in my job talk, or answer one interview question just a bit better? Things didn’t get any better when others were getting hired for those positions I interviewed for, and I would hear from the search committee that I was great but they just wanted to go in a different direction. Being the runner up was so painful. A lot of self-doubt crept in why I wasn’t getting a job, and this was really the one and only low point in my career. But just when I thought another sleepless night would come, I interviewed at West Virginia University and absolutely fell in love with the program, faculty, and students. So from the lowest point of my career I actually quickly got to arguably the highest point of my career accepting an Assistant Professor positon at WVU. You always hear the job market is tough, but until you go through it you have no idea!
What was the best piece of advice you been given?
The best advice I was ever given (which I have no idea who it came from), is don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Don’t just work on one manuscript or grant at a time, don’t have just one mentor you latch onto, don’t master just one statistical procedure or package. Variety really is the spice of life and to be successful in this field you need to become what I call an “academic juggler.” There are so many generative collaborators out there you can learn from, so utilize them. With funding lines being so low, put out a few grants and hope at least one hits. And with how long it takes to get published, work on a few manuscripts and get them out. I have yet to master this myself but it is a work in progress and looking at all the successful personality psychologist in our field, they are the best jugglers of all.
If you were a statistical test, which test would you be, and why?
I would definitely by a proportional hazards model (a.k.a survival analysis, Cox Model). This is really the first modeling technique I utilized as a graduate student to predict death. I love predicting death! So often you have reviewers criticizing you about the reliability or validity of your outcome. Well, not with death. It is the ultimate health outcome of all. I even love updates from the research team notifying me there are more dead people in the study. I think I contracted my love for studying death from my graduate school mentor Daniel Mroczek. I know it’s kind of morbid, but at least I am in good company!
What are important but understudied topics in personality?
Since I am a gerontologist at heart, I think we need to focus attention on how we measure personality in older adults. If we are truly trying to capture individual differences in the relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, behaviors and emotions, we need to understand how these factors may be more difficult to measure in older adults. In certain situations, such as in the predictive ability of traits on health, we might have to be even more precise at measuring personality during these older ages.