Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
This 1992 review describes the five-factor model, which groups personality into five basic traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. The authors summarize research using natural-language adjectives and personality questionnaires that supports the model’s broad coverage of personality and its usefulness across different observers and cultures. They review…
Researchers compared how well computers and humans can judge personality. They used data from 86,220 volunteers who took a 100-item personality questionnaire and looked at people’s Facebook Likes as the computer’s input. Computer predictions based on Likes matched the questionnaire scores better (r = 0.56) than friends’ judgments did (r…
The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is a self-report test made by Hans J. Eysenck and Sybil B. G. Eysenck to measure four personality scales: Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N), Psychoticism (P), and a Lie or social-desirability scale (L). It is based on Eysenck's theory that temperament has biological and genetic roots,…
This article updates a theory about how personality traits form. The author reviews their 2008 model and then expands it by bringing in ideas from evolutionary biology. The revised model adds two systems called “pliable” and “elastic” to help explain how traits change or stay the same. The paper is…
Researchers used moment‑to‑moment surveys (EMA) in two adult samples (N = 122 and 127) to map how attachment feelings change across one week (4629 and 5322 successful observations, with 7–10 surveys per day). They focused on three dynamic features: baseline (a person’s usual level), variability (how much it swings), and…
Emotional clarity means knowing and naming your own feelings. The paper reviews past research and argues that momentary or "state" emotional clarity — how clearly you understand your feelings in the moment — likely shows a person’s fluid emotional intelligence better than traditional tests or trait self-reports. The authors say…
