The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in people’s private and public lives that are unprecedented in modern history. However, little is known about the differential psychological consequences of restrictions that have been imposed to fight the pandemic. In a large and diverse German sample ( N = 1,320), we examined how individual differences in psychological consequences of the pandemic (perceived restrictiveness of government-supported measures, global pandemic-related appraisals, subjective well-being) were associated with a broad set of faceted personality traits (Big Five, Honesty-Humility, Dark Triad). Facets of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness were among the strongest and most important predictors of psychological outcomes, even after controlling for basic sociodemographic variables (gender, age). These findings suggest that psychological consequences of the pandemic depend on personality and thus add to the growing literature on the importance of considering individual differences in crisis situations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in people’s private and public lives that are unprecedented in modern history. However, little is known about the differential psychological consequences of restrictions that have been imposed to fight the pandemic. In a large and diverse German sample (N = 1,320), we examined how individual differences in psychological consequences of the pandemic (perceived restrictiveness of government-supported measures; global pandemic-related appraisals; subjective well-being) were associated with a broad set of faceted personality traits (Big Five, Honesty-Humility, Dark Triad). Facets of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness were among the strongest and most important predictors of psychological outcomes, even after controlling for basic socio-demographic variables (gender, age). These findings suggest that psychological consequences of the pandemic depend on personality and thus add to the growing literature on the importance of considering individual differences in crisis situations.

These results offer new directions for research on the expression of wisdom-related characteristics in daily life.

Personality psychology has long focused on structural trait models, but it can also offer a rich understanding of the dynamics, processes, mechanisms, and functioning of individual differences or entire persons. The field of personality dynamics, which works towards such an understanding, has experienced a renaissance in the last two decades. This review article seeks to act as a primer of that field. It covers its historical roots, summarizes current research strands – along with their theoretical backbones and methodologies – in an accessible way, and sketches some considerations for the future. In doing so, we introduce relevant concepts, give an overview of different topics and phenomena subsumed under the broad umbrella term ‘dynamics’, and highlight the interdisciplinarity as well as applied relevance of the field. We hope this article can serve as a useful overview for scholars within and outside of personality psychology who are interested in the dynamic nature of human behaviour and experience.

The use of journal impact factors and other metric indicators of research productivity, such as the h-index, has been heavily criticized for being invalid for the assessment of individual researchers and for fueling a detrimental “publish or perish” culture. Multiple initiatives call for developing alternatives to existing metrics that better reflect quality (instead of quantity) in research assessment. This report, written by a task force established by the German Psychological Society, proposes how responsible research assessment could be done in the field of psychology. We present four principles of responsible research assessment in hiring and promotion and suggest a two-phase assessment procedure that combines the objectivity and efficiency of indicators with a qualitative, discursive assessment of shortlisted candidates. The main aspects of our proposal are (a) to broaden the range of relevant research contributions to include published data sets and research software, along with research papers, and (b) to place greater emphasis on quality and rigor in research evaluation.

Personality Computing (PC) is a burgeoning field at the intersection of personality and computer science that seeks to extract personality‐relevant information (e.g., on Big Five trait levels) from sensor‐assessed information (e.g., written texts, digital footprints, smartphone usage, non‐verbal behavior, speech patterns, game‐play, etc.). Such sensor‐based personality assessment promises novel and often technologically sophisticated ways to unobtrusively measure individual differences in a highly precise, granular, and faking‐resistant manner. We review the different conceptual underpinnings of PC; survey how well different types of sensors can capture different types of personality‐relevant information; discuss the evaluation of PC performance and psychometric issues (reliability and validity) of sensor‐derived scores as well as ethical, legal, and societal implications; and highlight how modern personality and computer science can be married more effectively to provide practically useful personality assessment. Together, this review aims to introduce readers to the opportunities, challenges, pitfalls, and implications of PC.

The ubiquity of mobile devices allows researchers to assess people’s real-life behaviors objectively, unobtrusively, and with high temporal resolution. As a result, psychological mobile sensing research has grown rapidly. However, only very few cross-cultural mobile sensing studies have been conducted to date. In addition, existing multi-country studies often fail to acknowledge or examine possible cross-cultural differences. In this chapter, we illustrate biases that can occur when conducting cross-cultural mobile sensing studies. Such biases can relate to measurement, construct, sample, device type, user practices, and environmental factors. We also propose mitigation strategies to minimize these biases, such as the use of informants with expertise in local culture, the development of cross-culturally comparable instruments, the use of culture-specific recruiting strategies and incentives, and rigorous reporting standards regarding the generalizability of research findings. We hope to inspire rigorous comparative research to establish and refine mobile sensing methodologies for cross-cultural psychology.

During government-implemented restrictions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s everyday lives changed profoundly. However, there is to date little research chronicling how people perceived their changed everyday lives and which consequences this had. In a two-wave study, we examined the psychological characteristics of people’s situations and their correlates during shutdown in a large German sample (NT1 = 1,353; NT2 = 446). First, we compared characteristics during government-issued restrictions with retrospective accounts from before and with a follow-up assessment 6 to 7 months later when many restrictions had been lifted. We found that mean levels were lower and variances were higher for most characteristics during the shutdown. Second, the experience of certain situation characteristics was associated in meaningful and theoretically expected ways with people’s traits, appraisals of the COVID-19 crisis, and subjective well-being. Lastly, situation characteristics often substantially explained the associations of traits with appraisals and well-being. Our findings highlight the importance of considering perceived situations as these contribute to people’s functioning during crises.