European Assocation of Personality Psychology, President's Report
Jaap Denissen
Tilburg University
The European Association for Personality Psychology (EAPP) regards the Association for Research in Personality as a natural friend and close ally to promote the discipline of personality psychology. It is therefore a pleasure to report on efforts that EAPP undertook during the past year to achieve this goal. These efforts can be grouped in five domains. For those who only have time to read the short version: EAPP is a) actively promoting excellence in publishing the European Journal of Personality as its flagship journal, b) preparing for another European Conference of Personality in the enticing Spanish city of Madrid, c) rolling out new investment proposals, like a grant writing workshop and a system of travel stipends, d) improving the efficiency and transparency of its internal operations, e) encouraging its members, including early career members, to participate in in the management of the association and f) reaching out to personality scholars around the world. I hope that the following overview will motivate ARP members to become an EAPP member or renew their EAPP membership: https://eapp.org/membership.
EAPP is proud to publish the European Journal of Personality (EJP), the journal with the highest impact factor of all journals with an exclusive focus on personality. This success has been achieved by EJP's focus on solid research practices and theoretical innovation. Our editor-in-chief, Mitja Back, has done a wonderful job of putting together a dedicated team of associate editors and making sure that the journal is in a very good shape. This good shape pertains from the nuts and bolts of daily operations to a strategic and long-term dedication to proactively endorse novel research developments, such as our discipline's continued progress towards open science. I would like to thank all ARP members who have contributed to EJP's success as authors, reviewers, or readers. If you have not yet published in EJP, please consider doing so! Our journal is open to submissions from all countries, and submissions from North America already make up a large portion of our published articles. By submitting your best work to EJP, you benefit from a speedy and solid peer review process. Also, your work will be promoted on our EJP blog, which is regularly updated with interviews with authors. Check it out at https://www.ejp-blog.com/
Second, many ARP friends and colleagues are already regular visitors of our European Conference of Personality meetings. We hope that you will consider a visit to our 20th edition, which offers many highlights. For starters, it will take place in the beautiful and lively Spanish metropolis of Madrid — a must-visit due to its many cultural, architectural, and culinary highlights! Second, we have secured a star line-up of keynote speakers: Roberto Colom (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain), Markus Jokela (University of Helsinki, Finland), Barbara de Clerq (Ghent University, Belgium), Veronica Benet-Martínez (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain), and David Kenny (University of Connecticut, USA). With the help of generous sponsoring from Hogan Assessments, we have kept registration fees low, while simultaneously managing to include the price for the gala dinner in the standard fee. To remain updated about the conference, please visit https://eapp.org/meetings/conferences/conference-2020/ and subscribe to our ECP newsletter.
Third, EAPP is in a very healthy financial position and will invest in the well-being of personality psychology with a strategic investment program during the coming 10-year period. Three investment proposals are especially worthwhile. First, we will continue our commitment to organize the Summer School of Personality Science (SSPS), which took place for the first time in 2018 in Zadar, Croatia. Under the guidance of John Rauthmann, SSPS will become a tradition via which EAPP contributes to educating and connecting new generations of scholars. Second, we have announced a travel stipend program, which offers up to three early career scholars (from around the globe) a 5000€ stipend to conduct research in a European country, with a deadline to apply until June 10. Third, we are wrapping up preparations to create a grant writing workshop in which personality scholars are taught to write competitive grant proposals with feedback from both experts and peers. Note that these investments are on top of ongoing activities, such as the EAPP expert meetings. In the summer of 2019, no less than 2 expert meetings will take place, one on adolescent personality development in Dresden (Germany) and one on post-traumatic growth in Nottingham (United Kingdom). Make sure you join EAPP to benefit from these investments — membership only costs 40€ per year for mature scholars and 15€ per year for PhD students, so we think we offer a great return on investment.
Fourth, EAPP has invested heavily in upgrading its internal operations. This includes a revamped website with pictures (integrated with our new Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/162892106@N03/albums) and program books of past conferences, expert meetings, and summer schools. Check out https://eapp.org/meetings to see the result (and indulge in some well-founded nostalgia)! Furthermore, we have moved to Wildapricot to manage our membership affairs, an online system that makes payment of membership dues easy while also making it more efficient for us to communicate with our members. Third, EAPP has created a handbook that describes important procedures and best practices, which is already greatly improving the efficiency and transparency of our association. Finally, EAPP is investing in setting up a digital archive that contains important documents from our association's rich history. By the way, did you know that EAPP celebrated its 35th birthday on May 19, 2019? That day, 35 years ago, our association was established in Bielefeld, Germany. To celebrate, we gave away 35 free memberships to (PhD) students and scholars from low- and medium-income countries. This resulted in a membership that is more representative of the global research community, with notable influx from Turkey, the Russian Federation, China, Romania, and Serbia, and other countries. Welcome to all these new members!
Fifth, EAPP is keen on encouraging democratic and inclusive participation of all its members. During the Zadar conference in 2018, the members' meeting agreed on a series of changes in our statutes. Among these changes are two new EC roles. First, the diversity representative has the task of ensuring participation across gender and regional background. Anna Baumert agreed to be the first diversity representative, and one of the first activities was the formulation of the EAPP values, which include diversity and transparency. You can read this statement on https://eapp.org/organization/our-values/. Second, the updated statutes now define the role of early career scholar representative, a new position in our executive committee (EC). Because the EC wants to increase participation of early career scholars and because no less than 8 early career scholars decided to run for this important office, we decided to open up two positions for this group! Elections for these two positions were held on May 15, together with a third position for member at large. This resulted in mandates for Manon van Scheppingen (Netherlands) and Rebekka Weidmann (Switzerland) as early career scholars, and Verónica Benet-Martínez (Spain) as member-at-large. These new members have already brought much new energy and ideas to our EC.
Sixth, EAPP is a European association but it realizes that true strength lies in unity (of diversity). Personality psychology is a small field, yet it has important strengths as a hub science. Our field unifies knowledge about human individuals and its knowledge is crucial for many applied disciplines, such as work and organization psychology and clinical psychology. While I am thus very optimistic about the future of our discipline, I also see two strategic challenges. One challenge is that our field is still dominated by the US and Europe. I believe we should urgently expand to regions such as South America, Asia, and Africa. This mission has already been taken up by the World Association of Personality Psychology. To contribute to this mission on behalf of EAPP, I have recently contacted scholars from Turkey and China, and I intend to reach out to representatives from other regions as well. The second threat is that our field is fragmented. This has always been a great paradox to me: Why do we, as one of the smallest fields, have the largest number of associations? Of course, this is a strength as well because it promotes diversity of viewpoints. However, I think this diversity will only pay off maximally if there is coordination between associations, for example, under the umbrella of a World Federation of Personality Psychology. Wouldn't be nice if ARP and EAPP would be the frontrunners in bringing about this necessary coordination?
Prof. Jaap Denissen, EAPP President