Association for Research in Personality

Although the award is made annually, the ARP Executive Committee recently voted to make two awards in the coming year in order to sync the continuous history of annual awards with the current calendar year -- one for dissertations completed during the 2010 calendar year and a second for dissertations completed during the 2011 calendar year.

The winner of each dissertation award will be recognized with a plaque and invited to give a talk at the 2013 ARP meeting. In addition, the recipient will receive $750 to help defray costs of attending the meeting

To be eligible for the award, the dissertation must have (1) been completed and successfully defended during the specified time periods; and (2) make an original empirical contribution to the body of knowledge on personality and/or personality processes.

The members of the award committees this year are:

2010 Award Committee: Bob Krueger (chair), Brian Connelley (recent winner), and Dan Ozer (at-large).

2011 Award committee: Jeremy Biesanz (chair), Robert Latzman (recent winner), and Dan Mroczek (at-large).

Applicants should email:

a. Dissertation abstract. The award committee will review the submitted abstracts (1 – 2 pages in length, maximum 500 words) and choose three to five finalists, who will be asked to provide copies of their full dissertations for review;

b. A letter of support from their advisor or other committee member; and

c. A current curriculum vitae, including name, address, phone, fax, and email.

Completed packets and/or correspondence about the award should be sent to the respective committee chair:

Dissertations completed between Jan 1, 2010 and Dec 31, 2010: Bob Krueger (chair) at krueg038@gmail.com

Dissertations completed between Jan 1, 2011 and Dec 31, 2011: Jeremy Biesanz (chair) at jbiesanz@psych.ubc.ca

The deadline for submitting materials is Feb 15, 2012. Winners will be notified by June 15, 2012.

Eileen Donahue, Ph.D., Personality Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1993 

Dissertation: Bridging the gap between formal and informal assessments of personality 

Peter R. Darke, Ph.D., Experimental Social Psychology, University of Toronto, 1993

Dissertation: The effects of a lucky event and beliefs about luck on confidence and risk-taking

Dissertation: Family environment and adjustment in adolescence: Genetic and environmental influences over time

Brent Walter Roberts, Ph.D., Personality Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1994 

Dissertation: A longitudinal study of the reciprocal relation between women's personality and occupational experience

Dissertation: Personality traits and mental disorders: Studies of structures and their interrelations across nations, genders, races, assessment instruments, time periods and reporters

Eva Caroline Klohnen, Ph.D., Social/Personality Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1996

Dissertation: Life paths of avoidantly and securely attached women across adulthood: A 31-year longitudinal perspective

Dissertation: An identity consolation view of social phenomena: Theory and research

Jeremy C. Biesanz, Ph.D., Social and Personality Psychology, Arizona State University, 1999 

Dissertation: Personality coherence across time: Implications for the structure and perception of personality 

Dissertation: Agency and communion as fundamental dimensions of social adaptation and emotional adjustment 

Dissertation: Using item response theory to bridge the measurement gap between normal personality and psychopathy

Dissertation: Cognitive ability and externalizing behavior in a psychobiological personality framework.

Dissertation: Delineating the Structure of Normal and Abnormal Personality: An Integrative Hierarchical Approach

Dissertation: The reliability, convergence, and predictive validity of personality ratings: An other perspective

Dissertation: Interrelations among youth temperament, executive functions, and externalizing behaviors