Colby Personality Lab

My research currently focuses on three key issues. The first is personality structure: How people’s specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors cohere into broader 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 adulthood?

The second issue is lifespan personality development: When, how, and why people’s personalities change as they age. I am curious both about how people’s personalities typically change across the life span (normative change), and about why different people’s personalities change in different ways (individual differences in change).

The third issue is personality and life outcomes: How someone's personality characteristics helps shape the course of their life. I am particularly interested in understanding how personality traits influence (a) subjective well-being (e.g., whether or not someone is satisfied with their life), and (b) the political attitudes that different people hold.

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. (2012). Development of Big-Five domains and facets in adulthood: Mean-level age trends and broadly versus narrowly acting mechanisms. Journal of Personality, 80, 881-914.

Soto, C. J., & Jackson, J. J. (2013) Five-factor model of personality. In D. S. Dunn (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Soto, C. J. & Luhmann, M. (2013). Who can buy happiness? Personality traits moderate the effects of stable income differences and income fluctuations on life satisfaction. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 46-53.