Personality Processes Laboratory
Research Overview
Our personalities shape our lives in profound ways. Personality helps explain why different people are motivated to seek out different environments and experiences, and why they respond in different ways to the same situations and events. Our personality traits are also readily perceived by others, and influence how they behave towards us—thereby moulding our social world. The Personality Processes Laboratory seeks to expand our knowledge of the structure of personality, along with its underlying causes and downstream consequences for various aspects of our lives. We tackle various projects and topics, following our diverse interests, but some of the major research foci in our lab are described below.
The interplay of personality and wellbeing. Personality traits are among the strongest predictors of wellbeing. But which traits are most important for which aspects of wellbeing? What are the mechanisms through which our personality shapes the experienced quality of our lives? And how might effects of interventions to boost wellbeing depend on people’s personalities?
How personality traits predict prosociality and morality. What characteristics distinguish morally exceptional individuals from the average person? Who is more likely to give money to charity, or to help someone in need? How does our personality influence the principles we apply to distinguish right from wrong?
Individual differences in responses to rewards. People differ in the degree to which they learn from and are motivated by reward. Some theory and research suggest that these differences primarily relate to extraversion—extraverts appear to be more motivated by incentive rewards, such as money. Another kind of reward is information, such as gains in knowledge. People higher in openness/intellect may be more motivated by these kinds of rewards. The notion of information rewards also connects with the next topic…
Curiosity and exploration. What is curiosity, and how does it relate to exploratory behaviour, effort, and learning? How might our attitudes to uncertainty influence whether we are curious to explore or frightened about threats in the unknown? Our research has identified personality traits associated with uncertainty attitudes, explored the differences in how curiosity is measured across cognitive science versus personality psychology, and assessed how the context can shape our patterns of information seeking. Curiosity and exploration is also considered in applied areas (e.g., education; GenAI use).
Testing and refinement of theories within personality neuroscience. Neuroscience methods offer exciting ways to test theories about the mechanisms that might underlie our personalities. Most of the work in our lab in this area involves electroencephalogram (EEG). For example, we have found that EEG-derived indices of reward processing are correlated with trait extraversion. We have also used data-driven approaches to decode personality trait scores based on people’s resting neural activity.
To learn more about our lab, visit our dedicated website: Personality Processes Lab
Staff
Professor Luke Smillie (Co-Director)
Dr Hayley Jach (Co-Director)
Current graduate students
Allyson Albas
Yana Ryakhovskaya
Helena Luo
Rhys Davies Noulton
Past graduate students
Dr Rachel Avery
Dr Timothy Bainbridge
Dr Kate Barford
Dr Luiza Bonfim Pacheco
Dr Hayley Jach
Dr Erin Lawn
Dr Paul Liknaitzky
Dr Reb Rebele
Dr Haisu Sun
Dr Emily Spackman
Dr Nicholas Tan
Dr Kun Zhao
Collaborators
Associate Professor Jeromy Anglim (Deakin University)
Professor Weibke Bliedorn (Unviersity of Zurich)
Associate Professor Andrew Cooper (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Professor Colin DeYoung (University of Minnesota)
Dr Sonja Heintz (University of Plymouth)
Professor Kou Murayama (University of Tubingen)
Professor Alan Pickering (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Dr Isabel Thielmann (Max Planck Institute for Crime, Security, and Law, Freiburg)
Professor Jan Wacker (University of Hamburg)
Dr Joshua Wilt (Case Western Reserve )
Research Outcomes
Professor Luke Smillie's Psychology Today Blog: The Patterns of Persons
Scientific American:
The Conversation:
- Happiness hinges on personality so initiatives to improve wellbeing need to be tailor made
- The science of being nice: How politeness is different from compassion
- People with creative personalities really do see the world differently
- When bad ideas refuse to die: The denial of human individuality
- Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone
Research Publications
Recent Representative Research Publications
For a more up-to-date list of publications by the Personality Processes Lab Director, please refer to Google Scholar.
Anglim, J., Horwood, S., Smillie, L. D., Marrero, R. J., & Wood, J. K. (2020). Predicting Psychological and Subjective Well-Being from Personality: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146, 279-323. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000226
Bailey, N., Bonfim Pacheco, L., & Smillie, L. D. (2025). Cortical travelling waves relate to variation in personality traits. Imaging Neuroscience, 3, IMAG.a.119. https://doi.org/10.1162/IMAG.a.119
Bleidorn, W., Stahlmann, A. G., Orth, U., Smillie, L. D., & Hopwood, C.J. (2025). Personality Traits and Traditional Philanthropy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 129, 363-383. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000556
Jach, H. (2025). Exploring the Convergence of Curiosity across Behavioural Tasks and Personality Trait Questionnaires. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 19:e70113. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.70113
Jach, H. K., DeYoung, C. G. & Smillie, L. D. (2022). Why Do People Seek Information? The Role of Personality Traits and Situation Perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151, 934-959. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/xge0001109
Jach, H. K., Cools, R., Frisvold, A., et al., & Gottlieb, J. (2024). Individual differences in information demand have a low-dimensional structure predicted by some curiosity traits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(45), e2415236121. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2415236121
Jach, H. K., Bardach, L., & Murayama, K. (2023). How personality matters for education research. Educational Psychology Review, 35, Article 94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09807-4
Ryakhovskaya, Y., Jach, H. K., & Smillie, L. D. (2022). Curiosity as feelings of interest versus deprivation: Relations between curiosity traits and affective states when anticipating information. Journal of Research in Personality, 96, 104164. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104164
Smillie, L. D., Bennett, D., Tan, N. P., Suttcliff, K., Fayn, K., Bode, S. & Wacker, J. (2021). Does openness/intellect predict sensitivity to the reward value of information? Cognitive Affective and Behavioural Neuroscience, 21, 993-1009. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00900-1
Smillie, L. D., Ruby, M. Tan, N. P., Stollard, L., & Bastian, B. (2024). Differential Responses to Vegetarian Appeals: Exploring the Role of Traits, Beliefs, and Motives. Journal of Personality, 92, 800-819. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12866
Smillie, L. D. & Thielmann, I. (2023). Defining and describing morality: The view from personality psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 34 (2), 102-105. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2023.2248852