Introducing The Science of Personality Institute

Introduction to Personality Psychology

0:00people are the most consequential and dangerous forces on earth well personality psychology is about the nature of human nature it's about people and wouldn't that be useful to know it seems to me i can't i can't think of a more important problem you're listening to the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments the global leader in personality and leadership guided by your hosts hogan chief science officer and world-renowned personality psychologist dr ryan sherman alongside hogan's pr manager and

0:35resident storyteller blake lepp this podcast explores the impact of personality on life leadership and the nature of human nature hello everybody and welcome to the science of personality podcast i'm your host ryan sherman along with my co-host as always blake lepp say hello blake hello everybody and welcome back to

Guest Introduction

0:59the science of personality podcast episode 154 today ryan and i are joined by dr david condon director of hogan's newly formed science of personality institute to discuss his new role and vision for this exciting and an innovative extension of the hogan brand before accepting this new position david was a senior behavioral scientist at mid journey where he built and led a behavioral science function applying personality research directly to product development in an ai driven environment prior to that david was a faculty member at the university of oregon

1:32and northwestern university which is where he was trained as a personality psychologist so this is an exciting addition to the hogan family and we're looking forward to talking to him about his exciting new venture but before we get to our conversation with david if you wish to give us any ideas for upcoming episodes or you want to ask ryan or me a question shoot us an email at hello at the science of personality.com or follow the science of personality on linkedin now let's

David Condon Interview

1:59get to it david welcome to the podcast is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started just to say how excited i am to be here i'm a longtime fan of the podcast as you might as you might guess given the overlap between uh the science of personality podcast and the science of personality institute that i'm now directing uh so this is really exciting for me thanks so much for having me well david we're super excited to have you on here today for our audience members uh who may not know david is uh been a superstar researcher in personality psychology for for many years we've

2:32known each other for for quite a while i actually don't remember when we first met i'm sure it was at some personality conference somewhere uh but but david has a prolific public publication record uh i counted nearly 20 publications with nearly or maybe over 20 publications with nearly 100 citations uh david has over 5 600 citations in his career and continues to publish at an impressive clip so uh we are super excited to have you here with us today david yeah yeah i'm thrilled too i'm uh i actually

3:06do recall the first time we met it made a bigger impression on me i think meeting you right then then uh understandably may have gone in the other direction but yeah i was at a personality conference uh over 15 years ago now and uh we've been we've been good friends ever since um and i'm excited to bring you know to to share that friendship in our work together and uh to bring my uh enthusiasm for publishing about personality you know to to the institute appreciate the introduction well david let's eliminate all the confusion that our audience might have now you know they're

Defining Personality

3:37listening to the science of personality podcast you're the director of the science of personality institute so i guess david at a very high level can you explain in your own words what the science of personality institute is and what you're hoping to accomplish yeah believe it or not it's it's uh we are not here just to study the science of personality podcast though you guys have so much material that would keep us busy for a while no i i think the simplest way to put it um is to say that you know the science of personality institute exists uh for two reasons first it's you know to advance how

4:10we understand personality you know as a scientific disciplines uh in all respects and then the second is to to help make sure that understanding actually reaches the people who can who can use it um your your listeners might wonder you know this is sort of overlapping with the best in class work um that hogan has been doing for some time you know decades really but it's different too um quite different you know on the first point you know i think the spi is much different because uh we are a research institute so you know while we're housed at hogan uh the mandate for us is really about it's

4:44really about science as the name suggests not products so um you know it's true that our emphasis will be on applied science more than basic as much as it can be and that's a topic we might we might get into later that distinction between applied and basic but the the the key idea that i'm trying to emphasize is that we're focused on advancing the science across the field the whole field um of personality research instead of being focused on productization um you know at the spi and then on that second point you know making sure that personality related research findings

5:15um get disseminated you know or get shared as widely as possible um i would say the difference between the spi and existing hogan work um things that are already being done is that the scope of our audiences is is is a lot wider you know much wider it just relates back to the first point you know we're not we're not really focusing only on delivering for clients or potential clients in very targeted ways um but rather you know we're we're focused on helping people understand how important personality is you know that our founder bob hogan has made the point to me a few times now

5:47um it's a point i really like you know that personality science and personality scientists study the nature of human nature um and related to this idea earlier in my career you know i was uh i was co-director of what we call the personality is everywhere lab actually we just referred to it as the pie lab for short because it meant we got to you know eat a lot of pie and talk about pie which we uh we love as well but both of these ideas that personality is about the nature of human nature and um you know that personality is everywhere both of those are trying to make the point

6:19that personality has this deeply fundamental importance in in our lives it's it's not just about products either you know you you guys and probably most of your listeners already know how important personality is but it's my experience that most of the world really doesn't um really doesn't understand how how deeply embedded uh uh personality the effects of personality are in everything we do um and so what i'm hoping to accomplish is to close that that gap at least a little bit you know between what we know about personality and then how how it gets used how it gets viewed uh

6:53it's it's perceived status uh in the world how seriously personality gets taken so yeah you know we have our work cut out for us but but um i think the works you know it's tremendously important

Science of Personality Institute

7:05well certainly that that is true in terms of having the work your work cut out for you david you know when i think about something like the science of personality institute i'm trying to think what are the sort of equivalent kind of things out there and i think about uh bell labs you know for many years had this sort of scientific wing um ibm had a research wing for many years that that sort of just drove you know and you mentioned basic versus applied and i feel like a lot of that

7:36research in those was some people would call basic but it obviously had potential applications as well uh and i don't i sometimes i find that the line between basic and applied is not always so clear i think there's some research that you say well that really doesn't have really any applications whatsoever but there's other research that sort of dances right on that line of is this applied research or is this basic research and and to me i feel like that's sort of the sweet spot of where we want um where we want the science of personality institute what do you i mean what do you think

8:10what do you think about in terms of comparable organizations to the science of personality obviously we don't quite have the size of ibm research or bell labs at least not yet um but also about that that fine line between basic and applied research yeah well i think i it's interesting i have a couple of reactions to that i mean one is that personality itself as a field sits at the intersection of applied and and basic research if that if that makes sense i mean our experience of personality it's so fundamental you know it really does affect everything you know from the

8:44the smallest decisions we make all the way up to the ones that are most consequential um so it's hard to argue that any aspect of it is not applied and yet most of the research that's been done on it before now i'm talking about across the field very broadly uh has been basic you know just trying to understand what it is how uh how how to operationalize it what uh it contains with respect to like structure i mean you know without getting into too many of the um uh scientific jargon aspects um i think it is mainly studied in a basic way um and and i think that's something you know like

9:21i say that we we need to change um as far as other organizations you know it's my experience that personality is not studied in many places outside of academic labs but at least not um explicitly right i mean i i do feel there's quite a lot of overlap between uh there's many adjacent personality adjacent fields you know people are studying individual differences um without calling it personality in computer science um even in you know marketing many applied settings and in academic

9:53fields that are not even housed within psychology departments they're basically studying personality if they're looking at the ways that uh differences among people affect various outcomes but it's not called personality you know we don't refer to it in that way so um yeah i don't know i i feel it would be a real service to the community if we could broaden the you know scope of context where personality is studied uh more directly you know that's such a good point david and you know i you

10:24run into this all the time when we you mentioned computer scientists yeah i mean i think there's a whole number of economists a number of areas where you feel like you know these fields are just discovering personality and and just how much of an impact it has there but they tend to not use the same terms that we do and there seems to be sometimes i feel like a language barrier you know i i don't know if that's part of the mission for the spi or do you see that as part of the mission to try to maybe connect personality with some of these other fields and help get get everybody speaking on the same page

10:57in terms of language of personality yeah yeah absolutely it's part of it i don't know if it's part of the mission uh necessarily and not in specific terms but i suppose you could say it is to the extent that we want to really foster collaborations among people who are not currently talking to one another but i agree with you completely i mean it's my experience um for example having worked for a little while in a tier one medical center um many people working in in the health services fields are discovering personality just within the last decade now they are not calling it personality

11:29you know they're they're uh studying it by taking into account you know for example patient reported outcomes or they're referring to it uh in the context of uh socio-behavioral skills things like that but yeah yeah you hit the nail on the head i i think there's huge opportunity in trying to connect researchers who um whether indirectly or even without their own uh realization are studying fundamentally are studying personality putting them together with people that have knowledge of

12:00the work that's been done so far i think will be very fruitful well that's a good direction for us to go because um you know there are a lot of universities and research labs and other organizations dedicated to studying personality or or something that is personality related that maybe again like you mentioned earlier isn't called personality but i'm curious what makes the spi different and also what are some of the problems around personality that you are wanting to solve with this

Research Priorities

12:29yeah yeah no that's a great question too i mean i already talked a bit about how the spi is different maybe from existing uh you know capabilities within hogan i think the comparison to some of the other contexts academic labs especially as i said i think that's where most of the personality work is being done i think those comparison of the spi to those contexts is uh it's it's more complicated because they are so diverse really you know their goals uh and the ways that they function vary quite a lot you know between labs um it's my experience that you know most academic

13:04labs um one way or another they tend to be they tend to be focused on uh i mean i'm really being trying to trying to describe it concisely here they tend to be focused on getting publications through peer review uh and and training students you know possibly in that order maybe it should be the other way around but uh and there is like i say a lot of variability variability around how that how that gets done what that looks like on a day-to-day basis um but the you know among the problems with that model is the fact that they they rarely have access to uh applied you know data from applied

13:41settings certainly not at scale and across uh different contexts you know the good news is they they can be quite rigorous they typically are uh in my experience at least in the sense of being objective about their findings uh you know uncovering both the advantages and disadvantages of various constructs for example um so there's a lot of exceptions to that in academic settings you know some labs are doing uh more or less of of some activities than others but uh in theory they do have the freedom to be objective by contrast when personality is getting done even if not under the title of personality when

14:15it is getting done at commercial organizations i think they tend to have very very good applied data uh you know they're directly replica uh directly relevant and applied data but they don't always have incentive to publish sometimes they actually have disincentive to publish their findings right because it can have um you know uh like competitive consequences or maybe they're not motivated to be fully objective um when you know they're when their findings maybe run counter to the sales of their existing products um it's more oriented around r&d research rather than research for the sake of

14:51research so the spi should deliberately sit in between these these two contexts we certainly can be objective i'd say that you know hogan already excels at this but we also have a mandate to publish and to be rigorous and to hopefully find uh creative new ways to disseminate our our work um you know not just through the the traditional channels the other part of the question you know as for problems um you know that we aim to solve about how how the work is is being done you know i think it's tricky to make broad you know like critical statements uh in fact i'm not sure i'm i'm well positioned to do it

15:25about like academic labs um but i but i guess one thing that jumps out is that i think a lot gets lost between the results of academic research and application and and this is probably more of a problem for personality than it is for for some fields uh most scientific findings in my experience they just they don't find their way into practice uh so uh you know uh and by contrast i guess you could say a lot of the applied science related to personality is based on ideas that the that the

15:57researchers have abandoned you know some years ago so you see issues in both both directions um around making good on the on the work that's been done it's really more a problem about incentives in academia than anything else i think but um academics are primarily motivated to get their stuff out there and then hope that the world will know what what to do with it um and so that's that's something i'd like to address and i guess the other idea that comes to mind a problem for personality in my opinion um is that there's just a ton of people studying it across these different disciplines

16:27that never talk you know we've touched on this already uh academia is very siloed so i i i hope and expect that we'll get some traction by making the spi a place um that will connect those those siloed threads as i said earlier you know putting people together that uh are not currently talking yeah david i think that's one of the the goals of the spi is to try to to bring in more academic researchers to collaborate with because oftentimes to your point academic researchers are motivated

16:59to publish while the spi has certainly some motivation to publish hogan even though we we sit

Collaboration and Goals

17:04on mountains of data and lots and lots of studies most of those studies are just kept internally and they're not really published uh externally you know so to what extent or what are the sort of plans for connecting the spi with some of the academic researchers who might be able to you know leverage some of this hogan data some of these hogan research studies into more formal publications yeah i i think honestly a big part of it ron will will be improving the the the ways and the extent to which people are

17:37talking you know sharing ideas um collaborative innovation is hard to it's hard to generalize uh in my experience you know for example some of the ideas we've we've talked about already are um in you know creating for uh informal networks of researchers that meet periodically um we'd like to try and bring more people together in person you know especially these days everybody's working remotely but we'd like to have folks um working together through uh venues that are sometimes referred to as like topical

18:07meetings or expert meetings where where you're um convening people who really have world-class expertise to share their ideas share that expertise figure out where the gaps are and where progress might be made um and then of course you know through the traditional channels too i mean it may be as simple as uh helping to uh connect ideas with data and researchers right get them all sort of in the same room uh so to speak whether it's virtual or in person i think you get a lot from that and uh and then also being you know doing our best to to make the resources we do have the ones you just mentioned

18:42um you know accessible and and discoverable to the people who who uh have great research questions related to it you know david one of the questions i was just dying to ask whenever we we uh plan to have you on was you know if you ask 10 different people uh to define personality you'd get 10 different answers uh that's at least my experience absolutely so how would you define personality and then what you know in your opinion you know if you want to get philosophical with us uh makes

19:15it such a scientific discipline yeah yeah okay well that's an invitation for a philosophical answer i mean i i absolutely agree with you i think actually you get a different answer depending on who you ask and uh a lot of people on the street you know will really struggle to define personality at all i mean that's that's my experience i actually am one of the i this is something i ask people periodically when i run you know make a new friend or if somebody asks me about my work so uh yeah i think people struggle to know what personality is and that supports the point i made earlier about uh you know personality really just being taken taken so much for granted in our lives

19:49despite its importance i'll tell you my own answer has shifted pretty dramatically over the years i mean it's it's it's not like i've got all the answers my my opinion on this has evolved certainly within hogan you know the framing um that i work inside every day personality is defined as having you know these two aspects there's identity which is how you see yourself uh from the inside and then reputation which is how you know the people around you would describe you you guys have talked about this in in detail uh before so i might refer your listeners to more

20:22expert uh discussions of the of the point elsewhere um but you know reputation is really the part that you can observe well uh and measure well and it's what predicts outcomes so that's the side that we lean on uh scientifically especially in applied settings and i think that definition is it's a very good one perhaps it's the most useful way to really um define personality surprisingly to me most of the personality scientists that i've spent time with seem to have um gravitated to maybe one definition

20:57that's more conceptual than some others um they'll say something like personality is the stable constellation of how people uh differ in affect behavior cognition and desire that sounds like a lot of jargon but it's easy for me to remember because people sometimes call this the abcds uh affect behavior cognition and and desire um and i think that's a fine response but it to be honest um i'll admit it's always struck me as a little hollow uh feels very it does feel very academic it's really

21:30just a listing of the domains that um you know psychologists use to sort the ways that people differ right so it's you know it's about emotion and cognition motivations that kind of thing so it's more of a grouping of the aspects of personality than it is um a definition of what you know what personality actually is i think where i have landed where i am currently on this point is is more speculative i've been in this spot for a few years now so maybe it's crystallizing for me but uh it's

22:02my my definition is more about the structure of personality than uh its nature and and that's pretty well aligned with um my research perspective over the years too you know what i've felt uh is is most interesting and worth my attention is the structure of personality i think that structure is actually very similar to uh these long vectors that emerge from machine learning models now you invited me to be a little philosophical so i'm leaning into it uh i and maybe i shouldn't shouldn't apologize but i

22:33actually think you know machine learning algorithms are a really good way uh if even if they're a bit um you know a bit complex they're a really good way to think about personality so these vectors you know

Personality and Intelligence

22:43that get spit out they're they're highly complex they're hard to interpret they i mean they're arguably you know inscrutable really um interactions of all these you know thousands of variables that collectively shape how we how each of us responds to the situations we face in everyday life i mean i just think that's that's reality i as i said it is also speculative uh we're still waiting for the field to find a way to interpret these vectors that that doesn't sound so uh difficult to manage you

23:14know people want a cleaner answer because um and i agree it feels more satisfying to say for example you know personality is really just these five things that i can i can list with my fingers you know the big five or uh whatever you like i get that and so for those folks i tone it down i might just say you know personality is the psychological ways that people differ right that's the most straightforward i think it's easy and and accurate uh and it's an honest answer but it's it's not really the the whole story but you know it's an important question even though you know my my answer

23:47as we discussed there's a lot of ways that people think about it and my answer is pretty complex it's really important um you know how you how you carve personality because of uh the fact that you know these differences really do they do shape uh the things that people care about the most in their lives um i already mentioned it's both the very small decisions we make and the very consequential but i mean just to give some examples it's it's who uh you know who who thrives in a job what jobs we pick um which relationships uh we we prioritize and and uh whether or not they last i mean really

24:22important stuff so um yeah i do think this definition this philosophical question about how personality could be defined is um it's hard but it's also you know it's a it's a big one um so we should keep trying you know david i i agree i think it's hugely important and in fact i remember some years ago and i think it's still true today going to the wikipedia page for personality and i think it opens with i think the opening sentence is you know researchers scholars personality psychologists do not agree on one single

24:54definition of personality which uh doesn't really bode well i think in some ways for a field that you think wow there's no real real consensus about what the thing even is but i think there's there is a fair amount of consensus around things i mean you gave a definition that i i'm certain you learned in graduate school the one that i learned in graduate school was about a characteristic pattern of thoughts emotions and behaviors and and the mechanisms behind those and then it was about whether or not those mechanisms were hidden or or also in in plain view right so that was that was the definition that

25:25i learned of personality but i do think it is important that you are clear about what definition you're using when you're doing personality research whether it contains those mechanisms that are driving these kinds of behaviors or whether you're really just focusing on reputation whether you're focusing on identity as you mentioned earlier because if we're going to talk about things like personality change which is a really big topic today it's really important that you're clear about what's changing what is the thing that's

25:58actually changing is it the mechanisms that are driving behavior is it the behaviors themselves is it someone's reputation is it their identity the way they're thinking about themselves and research on personality change and not just personality change this is not i'm not picking on that topic there's lots of research on different personality topics where definitions are not consistent where one researcher will use one definition another researcher will use another definition it'll come to very different conclusions about uh let's say personality change but it really depends on what definition of

26:30personality you're using and uh you know for for me i i don't know that it's a necessity that uh you say this is the one definition of what personality is but i do think it is important for researchers to be clear about what they mean when they're using personal i've even seen in a single article researchers use the word personality in different ways to mean different things throughout the article and so uh even researchers themselves i think um get confused confused by this and aren't necessarily sticking to one definition we have a

27:05tendency to pick one that's convenient for the sentence i'm currently writing versus sticking with one throughout a uh an article on the topic but i think it is essential for answering some of these questions again like like we mentioned with personality change absolutely yeah i agree i agree completely i mean it's really what you're describing is is the importance of clear operationalization i mean i would even add to some of what you said that uh not only are the are the definitions inconsistently used but by nature you know by their very nature the boundaries around uh what folks are talking about

27:38those boundaries are usually not hard and fast and and clear you know i mean uh it's a slippery slope to some extent in my experience where where if you really want to get something that you can that you can get your arms around uh the definition necessarily slips down to something like individual differences right i mean that's a talk about a jargony phrase but um it you know because individual differences is something that we can sort of all agree on um in terms of of what they are and what they aren't

28:08and even then you know there are certainly exceptions i've had uh esoteric discussions about like well is that an individual difference um the problem with using individual differences from my perspective though is that um you run into boundary issues about what's personality versus you know right what's uh personal history what are what are socio-demographics you know things like that um well that was

Wikipedia Definition of Personality

28:31that's not a solution yeah that was going to be my natural question of that david i'm sure you've had many times before which concerns intelligence right because intelligence is an individual difference is that considered personality i of course their entire uh you know some people might argue that you should just get rid of personality altogether and it should just be into study of individual differences and that should be all there is to it but but uh but anyway i i mean i think that's a question for you then is you know where do you see things like intelligence falling in this in this field yeah i mean there what i thought you were going to uh where i thought you were going

29:05with part of your statement is that uh there have been like books written on this question is intelligence part of uh personality or not and i i think there's a strong argument actually uh in some areas uh the term personality is you know in some places the term personality is explicitly avoided so they study uh differential psychology for example uh some european institutions uh yeah to be to specifically get back to your question i i do think uh i do think intelligence is part of

29:36personality um but that then that that doesn't really help much because then it's it leads to the question what is intelligence right i mean you know certainly individual differences in cognition are truly and deeply important uh in in everyday life uh so that's why i feel that intelligence is part of personality but intelligence itself is has such a complicated history uh in many ways and is challenging to define so it's it's a partial answer uh probably not as thorough as as i'd like

30:06it to be but yeah what do you think is intelligent i'm curious ryan what would you say if i can ask the the interviewer is intelligence part of personality yeah i mean i tend to for me i tend to divide things partly based on the the test and again this is where it comes to defining you know what are the boundaries what are the things that you want to use to define it so for me when we think about things like an assessment for personality uh when i look at personality assessment questions to me there is no right or wrong answer whereas for intelligence questions there usually is one clear right answer

30:42and so for me that's a critical distinction between uh intelligence and personality but it really has to do with the assessment of them uh you know in some ways i also have a tendency to define competencies as things where you would always want more of a competency and i can see intelligence falling into that category i would always want more of this like i'm sure people can come up with reasons where you know oh more intelligence is bad but i don't think the data really bear that out i mean you know people will talk about examples where people overthink problems you can talk about examples where

31:16you know somebody who is really really intelligent uh use poor judgment but to me that's more of a deficiency in some other quality than than an issue with being overly intelligent so you know so for me when i see things like like intelligence or other kind of competencies in the workplace i tend to define those as a separate category from personality because in those cases more is almost always better interesting yeah yeah it's a good point i mean i love that adage that your greatest strength is your greatest weakness so even if you were to come up with something related to uh uh you know an excess

31:50you know an example of where an excess of intelligence uh is relevant it's probably just that it's it's uh getting in the way of uh adaptive you know uh personality functioning in some other area the example you gave is a good one i can imagine someone who's extremely intelligent may have a more difficult time making you know uh difficult decisions you know just acquiescing or are satisficing something like that but yeah it's interesting your your um your explanation is one i'd have to i'd have to think through i mean it may just be the nature of the intelligence tests too

32:23that you're describing as well like you could always come up with uh harder and harder questions where um or more complex questions maybe there's a way to think about it uh where there isn't a clear right answer you know many of the biggest problems that our society faces are um and that that deeply intelligent people are working on are related to topics that you know they don't they don't have a good answer right we don't have a clear solution um we just have to find the middle ground um that balances the tension between two and two paths forward but um now we're getting far afield anyway

32:55yeah i mean this is part of why i love being a personality psychologist okay gentlemen i don't want to derail us here but i had to pull up based on ryan's uh mention of the wikipedia page for personality um it does not lead off with what you said ryan um although uh for the third sentence in the in the first paragraph of the the entry it says although there is no consensus on the definition of personality most theories and personality focus on traits motivation skills and identity okay so there's that

33:26what did shock me in reading this was the sentence just before that just because there's so many people out there who or studies you see that kind of make the news here or there maybe it's just the world we live in but that says personality is relatively stable but can change over time due to experiences and developmental processes that's actually i feel like that's making some progress based on what we've been saying at hogan for a long time is that you know personality is stable where i think a lot of people

33:59like to think they can change and not saying it can't but i think it's interesting that the second sentence says that it is stable what do you all think about that well i think i think it is accurate to describe personality as relatively stable you know the question is in relation to what but i mean it's it's an it provides some leeway uh with respect to the question of can it change or does it change certainly we do see change uh most often over longer periods of time than under uh you know short window than in short windows of time um but yeah i think it is i

34:35think it is stable you know we refer to them as stable uh or excuse me uh dispositional uh individual differences um you know we we people tend to behave in ways that are recognizable um now i think it's also a major shortcoming that many people who uh try to apply personality you know sort of casually in their everyday life they assume it's deterministic um and and that's that's a big pitfall that folks fall into but it is stable um in that it's recognizable from one person to the next and over time

35:08yeah i think that that is one of the areas where there's a big consensus all right when we talk about definitions right so there there is a consensus around you know the relative stability of personality there is consensus i believe around it from what having some behavioral basis right we can talk about cognitive and emotional and motivational kinds of patterns as well but at the end of the day there is some sort of behavioral basis to it as compared to say other individual differences like you mentioned some earlier about demographic individual differences which you know aren't really

35:41behaviorally based right um you know hair color and things like that i mean obviously you can change your hair colors if you want to call that behavior based but i'm talking about you know your sort of natural hair color and those kind of things are not behaviorally based uh and so i think to me those are the kind of key things to show up when we talk about a common definition of personality it's the relative consistency it is that there are individual differences and it is that it's somewhat based in some kind of behavior that's observable yeah yeah i might even go one step further i was

36:15your comments prompted me to think you know in some sense it's not personality if it lacks stability right you know too much right i mean if it's i mean my advisor uh used to say that when you see people behaving very randomly you know it's a signal that something's wrong you know that there's a problem uh if folks are not behaving with any uh consistency from one situation to the next and i agree with that too i mean personality is stable because you know it's almost like um definitionally

36:47the case that it must be somewhat stable because that's what what makes it a person's personality okay david so when launching a new organization like the spi how do you decide what to prioritize

Prioritizing Initiatives

36:59first you know what initiatives do you think need to be addressed sooner rather than later oh yeah there's a nice parallel here i think too um i've been it's occurred to me lately uh this last month that i've been on the job that i think there's a nice parallel to the personality definition i described earlier around identity and reputation i mean maybe it's a little it takes some explanation i guess but um i'll try so you know the identity of an organization a new one especially is

37:29based on what the folks involved decide that the organization will stand for you know it's the internal aspects the um the things that you have some control about you know on day on day one or day 100 um whereas the reputation is how the the outside world um comes to describe and view the organization so those are the things that you don't necessarily get to set i mean you have control but it's it's a bit indirect so um anyway i i find that metaphor um useful in the work that i'm

38:01doing as you know given my background and personality so the first set of things the first real decisions that fall into that identity category uh i mean maybe i should have started when you're starting something new from scratch i learned a long while back the pieces are uh the mission people strategy and then uh execution and pivoting right so let me let me unpack that a bit the identity piece put you in a portion would be like this stuff those first three things so it's

38:31deciding what you're about uh pulling together you know the team taking stock of the team its capabilities and weaknesses uh and then setting a strategy that builds from your strengths and what you hope to do the mission it's all kind of uh tied up together the mission the people and the strategy um but you want to you want to have a strategy that that builds on your competitive advantages and then from there it's more about building a reputation over time so how well do you execute your strategy um and then perhaps more importantly how well do you you know repair

39:05when the execution is not going the way you planned or when you realize the world doesn't work the way uh you hoped or uh you know basically your strategy is not aligned with the mission you're not getting it done uh more simply so yeah i mean the you know thinking about what we hope to do sooner rather than later i mean we want to um avoid the pitfalls um you know the most obvious failure mode uh in my mind is trying to execute on a strategy that's way too broad or just poorly aligned um with with our our

39:35strengths our assets uh you know i think that that you see that all the time people that that they tried to do too much or they push too hard and the result is that you know things end up coming across as as sloppy or you're you're over promising and under delivering i mean i think that's it's all too common of a problem one of my personal models mottos um has been for for many years to just do things good which is actually a little more sophisticated than it seems uh and sort of intentionally uh humble

40:05that that model but you know you basically you have to actually do things and then you you have to get them all the way done to completion and and you should do them well because the failure to get things done or to do them well uh is where you really run into trouble it's visible and uh and you end up not accomplishing much now in truth some of our ambitions uh will be slower to materialize than than than others of course i mean some of what we've we've um put into our scope is um very ambitious um and so that that would be something we'll have to balance but i hope that um you know we can get

40:36the the mission and the strategy certainly we already have a good team to to lean on we hope we can get those things um headed in the right direction in these first few months and then build from there yeah i mean i i totally agree with you david i do think one of the concerns you see with any kind of operation is you know trying to do too much um or or i mean actually you made a really good point there about trying to do things that you don't have the you know the count the talents or the capabilities to achieve you know blake and i love a good sports reference and i i think uh you see

41:12that show up a lot in sports where a team will try to play in a way that doesn't match with their own strengths doesn't match with their own talents doesn't match with their own capabilities uh we're recording this the day after the u.s men's national soccer team uh didn't have their best performance let's say against belgium uh and you know i will say certainly from my view of the match it looked like they were outclassed at times um but i also wonder to what extent you know trying to execute a strategy that doesn't play with your strengths and i'm not saying that that's what they're trying to do

41:43there you know um you know is it's a failure not just in sports but it's also a failure in sort of business it's a failure and i think an institution like the science personal institute as well so i do think it makes a lot of sense for you and your team to consider what are your strongest areas what are the things that we're we're the we can be the best at what are the resources that we have available at hogan where can we really uh excel the most um i think is is totally the right way to go because um you know trying to do things that are outside of the scope of our capabilities is almost

42:17certainly uh a recipe for disaster absolutely yeah i agree i i agree it happened like i said it does happen all too often that um you know your aspirations may get ahead of you um and it can it can manifest in terms of trying to do things you don't have the capacity to handle or just trying to do too many things too quickly uh as i said but certainly you know for the team we we intend to build from a foundation of success because that's good on all fronts and it makes uh for you know

42:49quicker and more rapid uh reputational you know uh perception and it also just feels good right i mean to be building from success you get some early wins um can be very motivating and fortunately i'm working i'm walking into a an organization that has a history of strong uh research publications and dissemination through through hogan press as well so right off the bat i'm starting uh with with a group that that has a lot going forward well david i'm curious uh on to my next question how much

Collaboration at SPI

43:18will collaboration play a role at the spi you know are there going to be other people from hogan involved which i mean i assume there will be and also will there will you be working with external researchers and practitioners to accomplish the institute's goals yeah absolutely i mean collaboration is not really you know not really a nice to have it is it is critical it's most of the of the model um you know i've in various capacities i've worked with a number of institutes uh over the years and i think there's a really important distinction to be made between an institute

43:49and and uh a lab right i mean uh an institute that only produces its own uh in-house research it's not really an institute it's more like it's more like a lab you're functioning more like a lab and so the whole value proposition uh you know that we're putting forth is uh based on the idea that you know we want to be a place where people that don't normally work together end up in the same room because they share uh passion and interest around a similar idea or a related idea and and you know speaking on a

44:20more personal level i actually have found historically that virtually all of my successes have come from collaborative work and i think that's that's for many reasons that's not to say i've only done collaborative work but i find that it tends to uh tends to just not not turn out it does it's not as visible it tends to not turn out as well as uh the collaborative stuff and i don't know if that's because it's just uh you know it's a signal that it's more uh something i'm more passionate about than the world at large there's a lot of things like that i think that's the essence of being a bit

44:50nerdy but uh i i think there are other reasons too you know the the collaborative work tends to be better because it's informed by more opinions uh it had it gets benefits from you know just having more energy more volume uh uh you know it's it's actually more focused despite having you know greater diversity of input it tends to be more focused and clean it's sort of like you have a lot more editors right uh in some sense i mean that's a very specific um task aspect of research but i think the idea applies generally to all of the work that's being done yeah and then the difficulty uh you know

45:25collaborative work is um organizing you know and motivating keeping people on task and and keeping people motivated but that's really that's the work we need to do so um we have to lean we have to lean into that and and but i guess i should also mention you you know you made the distinction between the internal and external uh uh nature of collaboration it will it will be both i hope it will be i hope we can blur the lines a little bit actually by um you know getting people getting people to to know one another and and work together um and we'll take good ideas anywhere we can find them and energy

45:58as well so yeah collaboration uh is a lot of what we're doing if we're doing it right you know in in five years um i think the best work of the spi will have have um many names on it you know many people who believe that uh they deserve part of the credit i hope that will happen you know part of me david that what i really love about about this spi and what i really love about the institute here is that it really follows on this sort of lifelong goal of rt lifelong uh mission of rt to

46:33or robert hogan for those of you who don't know who i'm talking about um to continue the the progress around personality psychology um to uh keep personality psychology alive as he would put it uh there there was a time in history where personality psychology was uh where it really struggled where it was struggle to get grant funding if you're a personality psychologist struggle to be able to conduct research as a personality psychologist certainly a struggle to publish research and to have a career as a personality psychologist so to me one of the really cool things

47:09about the spi is that it is keeping that mission and the message around the importance of personality alive and what i guess i really appreciate about it most is it tells you that despite running a really successful business like hogan assessments that the dr hogan created his real passion is around the science his real passion is around the topic of personality and this is what he wants to invest in right most businesses would say we're not going to invest in this kind of

47:44thing but this is really what he cares about and and yes there's a business and the business exists but that was never his primary driver was was about the business the primary driver was always about this mission around personality psychology totally agree i mean he's a pioneer i actually i don't know if if if uh folks in the like more recent generations of uh personality research appreciate the extent to which he had a pioneering influence on the field i mean that's something i think we ought to try and uh

48:18try and you know message we ought to try and share but um i totally agree with what you're saying and i i it's inspiring to me personally sincerely especially as someone who feels sort of um i mean i i view myself as being quote-unquote evangelical when it comes to uh the importance of personality science and i don't you know i don't think i do it as much or as well as as uh as as rt as as bob hogan does um i i aspire to do it better but it's just so important um and really central to the goals of of the spi um yeah i mean

48:52it's it's it's really hard to overstate the situation you referred back to um an earlier crisis that personality suffered through uh you know back in the 70s uh in spilling over into the 80s i think there um you know there could be similar crises uh in the future related to personality um if if the field uh isn't careful you know if we're not able to attend to some of the shortcomings that i've mentioned earlier um but we're here to keep that from happening and and above all just

49:23encourage folks to innovate you know to to see personality for for uh for what it is and how important it is and um push things forward that's that's really is the the primary goal and and and i hope that other people will share my um my sense of mission around it well david i think it's the perfect time to peer into the crystal ball as we start uh as we start bringing this episode to a close

Future of SPI

49:47so if you could fast forward five years what outcomes would make you say the spi has been a success well you know most simply i would go back to the goals we talked about it you know at the beginning advancing the science and then and then helping to improve the dissemination of personality science um you know in new ways uh not just more volume but also uh broader reach and in new ways but as far as goals go i mean well here's a concrete one that i actually care about quite a lot um people who know my work will will will recognize my research in this but i personally i would like

50:22to hear uh personality and assessment psychologists reaching for the big five a lot less you know and similar not just the big five but uh these low dimensional models of of uh you know trait theory um low dimensional models of personality like the big five they've become the sort of mindless default if i can be a bit you know uh a bit critical and and i see that as as a problem that's really the one i had in mind a moment ago where i i uh i made the you know the the darker uh comment around like

50:54we need to we need to proceed with caution um because i think it's overdone i think the big five five factor model is a real achievement but it's just become um you know the reflexive frame that uh personality folks often use you know personality researchers they often use it um without asking whether it's the right model for the question in front of them uh so within five years the the field is holding that model a little more lightly um and using it you know really it's just one lens uh to to apply to personality then that will that will be success uh and i i'd like to hope that the spi will

51:31have a part in uh in in that happening but yeah i mean another couple of um goals i mean the biggest marker of our success is harder to uh is harder to articulate um because there's really not much precedent for it we've talked about it a little bit but i i want the spi to become a model for what you know serious personality science can look like outside of the university i think part of um you know advancing personality is is ensuring that there are uh diversity of healthy ways for personalities

52:06you know healthy places for personality scientists to work right now um the the context of personality work is fairly one-dimensional in the sense that it's often done most often done uh in academia hogan already does provide um you know a pretty great uh research uh framework outside of academia but that work is um it's mainly commercial and applied you know it is it is product driven you know at the most basic level and so what i'm hoping is that the spi can provide a place where that same level of rigor uh and innovation can can also be done uh you know uh in a less commercial

52:43context not because it's uh we're developing a product that someone needs but that we are advancing science uh it's that one's a tough one because it's more like i'll know it when i see it you know i'm uh as far as goals go it doesn't have a metric tied to it um but i think the field will know it too if if uh and recognize it if we are successful in creating that sort of model um yeah those those are my main answers i don't know i'd be curious to hear ryan's thoughts on this one too what what should the goals of our success um be you know five ten years out yeah you know i i do think those are some of the really

53:19important goals i know one of the things you and i david have talked about is um is using our network using hogan's you know a vast network of uh distributors our vast network of partners all over the world who are working with some of the top leaders around the world to on a more regular basis say something about the state of leadership and and what we can know about today's leaders and how can we can develop the future you know leaders of our workforce and you know what kinds

53:52of reporting mechanisms we might have available to us in the spi to deliver that kind of information at a broad scale just earlier this year we launched and we did a podcast episode not too long ago about it the global leadership effectiveness survey which was later renamed the leadership divide the leadership divide report came out and this was the result of a really large survey effort and i wondered to what extent the spi can lead these kind of efforts going forward to bring those kind of insights to the public i mean i think that's what the whole goal of the leadership divide report was to

54:25say something to the public about leadership and what we know about the current state of leadership and and what we ought to aim for going forward and i think we can continue to do those kind of things through through the spi but i also wonder about the future some future research in the spi around different kinds of assessment so as artificial intelligence has become more important impact in our lives and people are using artificial intelligence more i wonder about how assessments might change will we continue to see people taking liquor type response assessments where you from

55:00strongly disagree to strongly agree like we see today or or will people be assessed in different ways will they be assessed via a conversation with an ai will they be be assessed via responding to situations and scenarios that are text-based where they write down their responses and and what are the implications for that and i wonder to what extent the spi is going to be used to help us discover what the future of assessment may or may not look like yeah wow that's a great answer i i totally agree with you in terms of these sort of uh uh maybe one way to frame what you described with

55:35with respect to the leadership divide is these are almost like special topics you know topics that deserve um higher status in terms of their consequence for personality how personality relates to outcomes several come to mind you know i i can imagine uh continuing the work that was done on leadership that may be the most important it's probably a good reason to have started there but you know other topics that are um nearly as important relate to things like creativity you know what matters about personality uh as the world is changing in the context of ai um and and then as as you suggested

56:08too i i do think the uh methodological change you know is on the horizon uh for for personality and many other fields in the social sciences and the reason is because we really want to capture those complex vectors of uh you know that in my philosophical answer earlier we want to find better ways to capture those complex vectors that are um driving the decisions people make uh about how to behave and how to interact with one another uh and and how to you know live their lives basically so um yeah

56:40that's i like hearing your answer i appreciate that uh took some notes on it while you're talking and i i think uh the sbi is better positioned than any uh organization i can think of to to do those things you know to pull that stuff off successfully well david this has been an awesome conversation one one one last question before we let you go uh and i i want to you know just hear from you on a personal level so what excites you the most personally about leading this new effort yeah well well there's a couple things that come to mind i mean the i guess one of them is is maybe a bit uh a bit a bit selfish

57:14you know which is that you just don't frequently get the opportunity to build something uh on the science side from uh from uh from a nearly blank page um and i have really appreciated that about the opportunity the folks that i'm working with um are treating it exactly that way you know my own career uh excuse me like most people you know uh has been spent working in contexts that uh existed before i got there you know and in that sense you're sort of entering a conversation that's already underway and dealing with um the structures and constraints you know the stuff that that goes with

57:47with um those situations and this one's a little bit different you know getting to decide what an institute stands for um you know having to to live with that to stand it up that's a rare opportunity and i don't i don't take it lightly by any means um yeah i mean a bigger one you know bigger a bigger topic that that i'm very excited about that is not just relevant for me is that it you know the opportunity sits on this interesting boundary um between rigorous science on the one hand and and

58:17the application uh on the on the other hand you know whether any of that science actually helps people to live better lives uh and i've spent i spent a long time on both sides of that you know we didn't get into uh my prior work before uh becoming a psychologist but i but i have spent time on both sides of that that line uh doing the rigorous basic science and then thinking about more um you know thinking more intensively about applied uh settings the application of science to new opportunities but to try to walk the line in between the two uh is very exciting i mean the chance to spend the next stretch

58:53of my career um bridging that gap and that does it for the science of personality podcast episode 153. be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode cheers everybody

59:08that's why i'm here and uh that's where i think we'll we'll get a lot of growth and and realize um you know serious potential from the opportunity so i would do that you know i'll be here on all the hard days that's what's going to motivate me when when things get tough and i'm excited to do it um which is which is how i know it's the right thing to be doing well i'll just say david we're super excited to have you here um you know i mentioned at the at the outset of the episode that you're somebody i've known for a long time and when i first heard about this role you're certainly one of the first people to come to mind for leading up this initiative

59:43and this institute so super excited that uh we finally get to work together after so many years and um happy to have you here now you did mention at the start of the episode that you were a uh a long time listener and so i have to ask who is your favorite co-host of the science big question david i'm just yeah i'm gonna have to answer that one oh okay fair enough good i was going to cop out anyway and take the easy you know uh say that i think you

1:00:15what i really love is actually the way you guys relate to one another um and and actually that's worth saying and uh despite it being sort of a cop-out answer you have uh such great report together it's pretty impressive well report just doesn't doesn't happen overnight now that we're you know just be in the fourth episode you know you you're gonna establish it whether you like it or not right ryan yeah absolutely that's right no no ryan and i always had a good report even going back to before we started the podcast uh but uh but but yeah you can you can tell it comes through

1:00:50and and it means a lot it makes the content more interesting yeah yeah you really get to know it i mean or to establish it and develop it even more when you're doing this and releasing a new episode every two weeks for you know over six years now but but no no it's uh it's it's been a fun ride uh but you don't realize just how much better you're getting at doing this whole thing until you kind of reflect on it a little bit but uh i i'm glad david you you decided not to to give a direct answer

1:01:21on that one and we'll just wrap this up right now uh but appreciate you coming on uh looking forward to to working with you more in the future i know our our paths will cross quite a bit um you know from time to time here and in the the coming months and weeks and days or whatever you want to look at it so uh looking forward to having you uh at hogan and getting to meet you in person thanks so much yeah i'm thrilled to be thrilled to be here at hogan and very happy to have been part of the science of personality podcast just a just a small slice but uh i'm i'm proud of it thanks for having me

1:01:58and that does it for the science of personality podcast episode 154 be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode cheers everybody

1:02:14this has been the science of personality podcast brought to you by hogan assessments you can access all episodes on our website thescienceofpersonality.com or on the streaming service of your choice see you next time you