My research currently focuses on two key issues. The first is personality structure: How people's specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors cohere into personality characteristics that persist over time and across relevant situations. I am especially interested in questions about whether, how, and why people's personalities might be organized differently at different times of life, or in different social contexts. For example, are personality characteristics organized in similar or different ways during childhood versus during adulthood?

The second issue is lifespan personality development: How people's personalities change as they age, and how these changes relate with social (e.g., relationships, careers) and biological (e.g., health) factors. I am curious both about how people's personalities typically change across the life course (normative change), and about why different people's personalities change in different ways (individual differences in change).

I am also interested in a variety of methodological and quantitative issues. These include best practices for psychological measurement, using the Internet to collect psychological data, methods for modeling multidimensional structures, and methods for analyzing change.

Helson, R., & Soto, C. J. (2005). Up and down in middle age: Monotonic and nonmonotonic changes in roles, status, and personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 194-204.

Helson, R., Soto, C. J., & Cate, R. A. (2006). From young adulthood through the middle ages. In D. K. Mroczek & T. D. Little (Eds.), Handbook of personality development (pp. 337-352). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

John, O. P., & Soto, C. J. (2007). The importance of being valid: Reliability and the process of construct validation. In R. W. Robins, R. C. Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in personality psychology (pp. 461-494). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

John, O. P., Naumann, L., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and conceptual issues. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 114-158). New York, NY: Guilford.

Soto, C. J., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The developmental psychometrics of Big Five self-reports: Acquiescence, factor structure, coherence, and differentiation from ages 10 to 20. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 718-737.

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2009). Ten facet scales for the Big Five Inventory: Convergence with NEO PI-R facets, self-peer agreement, and discriminant validity. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 84-90.

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2009). Using the California Psychological Inventory to assess the Big Five personality domains: A hierarchical approach. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 25-38.

Orth, U., Robins, R. W., & Soto, C. J. (2010). Tracking the trajectory of shame, guilt, and pride across the life span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 1061-1071.

Malka, A., & Soto, C. J. (2011). The conflicting influences of religiosity on attitude toward torture. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 1091-1103.

Malka, A., Soto, C. J., Cohen, A. B., & Miller, D. T. (2011). Religiosity and social welfare: Competing influences of cultural conservatism and prosocial value orientation. Journal of Personality, 79, 763-792.

Soto, C. J., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2011). Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big-Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 330-348.

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (in press). Development of Big-Five domains and facets in adulthood: Mean-level age trends and broadly versus narrowly acting mechanisms. Journal of Personality.