René Mõttus
@renemottus.bsky.social
Personality psychology professor.
Edinburgh. Tartu.
Current effort: https://whichjob.me
About psychology:
https://psychologytoday.com/us/blog/people-unexplained
https://personalitypsychologypodcast.com
Edinburgh. Tartu.
Current effort: https://whichjob.me
About psychology:
https://psychologytoday.com/us/blog/people-unexplained
https://personalitypsychologypodcast.com
🔔 Those coming to the ECP22 in Edinburgh: Consider booking accommodation early!
Edinburgh is a very popular place.
Here are accommodation tips for ECP folks:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
📝 Submissions & registrations are also open:
ecp22edinburgh.org
#ecp22
Edinburgh is a very popular place.
Here are accommodation tips for ECP folks:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
📝 Submissions & registrations are also open:
ecp22edinburgh.org
#ecp22
November 6, 2025 at 5:11 PM
🔔 Those coming to the ECP22 in Edinburgh: Consider booking accommodation early!
Edinburgh is a very popular place.
Here are accommodation tips for ECP folks:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
📝 Submissions & registrations are also open:
ecp22edinburgh.org
#ecp22
Edinburgh is a very popular place.
Here are accommodation tips for ECP folks:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
📝 Submissions & registrations are also open:
ecp22edinburgh.org
#ecp22
Why aren't some of the strongest personality neuroscience papers getting widely cited?
November 4, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Why aren't some of the strongest personality neuroscience papers getting widely cited?
ECP22 Registration is now open:
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/registration
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/registration
November 4, 2025 at 1:01 PM
ECP22 Registration is now open:
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/registration
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/registration
Reminder: the 22nd European Conference on Personality, ECP22, Edinburgh, July 2026, is accepting submissions until 07/12. Submit a symposium, talk, or poster! We promise you the best research, many smart discussions, social fun, and a fantastic historic city.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
October 24, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Reminder: the 22nd European Conference on Personality, ECP22, Edinburgh, July 2026, is accepting submissions until 07/12. Submit a symposium, talk, or poster! We promise you the best research, many smart discussions, social fun, and a fantastic historic city.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
Submissions are now open for 22nd European Conference on Personality (Edinburgh, 2026); deadline 7/12/25.
Keynote speakers and pre-conference workshops have also been confirmed.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
Keynote speakers and pre-conference workshops have also been confirmed.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
September 18, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Submissions are now open for 22nd European Conference on Personality (Edinburgh, 2026); deadline 7/12/25.
Keynote speakers and pre-conference workshops have also been confirmed.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
Keynote speakers and pre-conference workshops have also been confirmed.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
Now published in Current Opinion, we show why personality research should embrace multi-rater studies and how this can be achieved in practice, even at scale. Often, this is the most realistic way to avoid (reliably) invalid conclusions.
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
June 30, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Now published in Current Opinion, we show why personality research should embrace multi-rater studies and how this can be achieved in practice, even at scale. Often, this is the most realistic way to avoid (reliably) invalid conclusions.
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
Would you recognise your friend from their personality trait profile?
Photos can be instructive: portraits of 5×5px (Big Five), 30×30px (NEO facets), or 100×100px (more facets/nuances). You decide.
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Photos can be instructive: portraits of 5×5px (Big Five), 30×30px (NEO facets), or 100×100px (more facets/nuances). You decide.
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
June 7, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Would you recognise your friend from their personality trait profile?
Photos can be instructive: portraits of 5×5px (Big Five), 30×30px (NEO facets), or 100×100px (more facets/nuances). You decide.
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Photos can be instructive: portraits of 5×5px (Big Five), 30×30px (NEO facets), or 100×100px (more facets/nuances). You decide.
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
How do life satisfaction and job satisfaction vary among hundreds of jobs? (Doing a religion job looks good, if you are considering a career change.)
New preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
New preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
May 7, 2025 at 3:14 PM
How do life satisfaction and job satisfaction vary among hundreds of jobs? (Doing a religion job looks good, if you are considering a career change.)
New preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
New preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
A reminder: the European Conference of Personality of 2026, ECP22, will be in Edinburgh in July 2026.
ecp22edinburgh.org
ecp22edinburgh.org
April 14, 2025 at 10:21 PM
A reminder: the European Conference of Personality of 2026, ECP22, will be in Edinburgh in July 2026.
ecp22edinburgh.org
ecp22edinburgh.org
We show how personality traits' familial transmission is usually misestimated (due to single-method biases) and often misunderstood (confusing non-additive transmission that only makes identical twins alike with transmission that makes ordinary relatives alike).
Now out in JPSP.
tinyurl.com/mrejyhb4
Now out in JPSP.
tinyurl.com/mrejyhb4
March 30, 2025 at 2:21 PM
We show how personality traits' familial transmission is usually misestimated (due to single-method biases) and often misunderstood (confusing non-additive transmission that only makes identical twins alike with transmission that makes ordinary relatives alike).
Now out in JPSP.
tinyurl.com/mrejyhb4
Now out in JPSP.
tinyurl.com/mrejyhb4
What's the age of your personality?
We put out a preprint on personality age, showing it tends to closely match chronological age. Last year, I posted my prediction on X (r ≈ .90), and the results are very close.
We explicitly argue against any kind of determinism, though!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
We put out a preprint on personality age, showing it tends to closely match chronological age. Last year, I posted my prediction on X (r ≈ .90), and the results are very close.
We explicitly argue against any kind of determinism, though!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
March 29, 2025 at 1:11 PM
What's the age of your personality?
We put out a preprint on personality age, showing it tends to closely match chronological age. Last year, I posted my prediction on X (r ≈ .90), and the results are very close.
We explicitly argue against any kind of determinism, though!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
We put out a preprint on personality age, showing it tends to closely match chronological age. Last year, I posted my prediction on X (r ≈ .90), and the results are very close.
We explicitly argue against any kind of determinism, though!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Now in print (open access): In a sample of N > 16,000 assessed with self- and informant-reports, psychopathology has stronger associations with personality domains and nuances than typically seen in self-report-only data.
doi.org/10.1037/abn0...
doi.org/10.1037/abn0...
March 3, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Now in print (open access): In a sample of N > 16,000 assessed with self- and informant-reports, psychopathology has stronger associations with personality domains and nuances than typically seen in self-report-only data.
doi.org/10.1037/abn0...
doi.org/10.1037/abn0...
A bit different, but I try to quantify personality age across adulthood & find it tracks chronological age so closely its distributions at ages 20 and 70 barely overlap (d = 3.12). So, even aggregated normative changes-wise, most people should expect to be very different in 50 years.
February 2, 2025 at 11:38 PM
A bit different, but I try to quantify personality age across adulthood & find it tracks chronological age so closely its distributions at ages 20 and 70 barely overlap (d = 3.12). So, even aggregated normative changes-wise, most people should expect to be very different in 50 years.
Gender differences in personality traits are highly nuanced. This makes gender very accurately predictable from personality traits (AUC > 0.90). But it also means we cannot say much about someone's traits based on their gender.
A multi-country, multi-measure study:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jr...
A multi-country, multi-measure study:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jr...
January 25, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Gender differences in personality traits are highly nuanced. This makes gender very accurately predictable from personality traits (AUC > 0.90). But it also means we cannot say much about someone's traits based on their gender.
A multi-country, multi-measure study:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jr...
A multi-country, multi-measure study:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jr...
whichjob.me, allowing people to explore the jobs that best match their personality traits, is already available in 10 languages. More will follow soon.
It has been used by over 110K people in the past 4 months.
Data is publicly available at osf.io/mvzd4
It has been used by over 110K people in the past 4 months.
Data is publicly available at osf.io/mvzd4
January 3, 2025 at 1:35 PM
whichjob.me, allowing people to explore the jobs that best match their personality traits, is already available in 10 languages. More will follow soon.
It has been used by over 110K people in the past 4 months.
Data is publicly available at osf.io/mvzd4
It has been used by over 110K people in the past 4 months.
Data is publicly available at osf.io/mvzd4
Is personality so predictably linked to chronological age that unique experiences usually play only a minor role in personality development? Comments and criticism are welcome on the intro draft of a paper proposing and testing this hypothesis.
shorturl.at/QPKpw
shorturl.at/QPKpw
December 25, 2024 at 1:18 PM
Is personality so predictably linked to chronological age that unique experiences usually play only a minor role in personality development? Comments and criticism are welcome on the intro draft of a paper proposing and testing this hypothesis.
shorturl.at/QPKpw
shorturl.at/QPKpw
It is interesting that WHO defines well-being as being “determined by social, economic and environmental conditions”, effectively excluding any influences from within the person. I think personality scientists disagree.
www.who.int/publications...
www.who.int/publications...
December 6, 2024 at 9:41 PM
It is interesting that WHO defines well-being as being “determined by social, economic and environmental conditions”, effectively excluding any influences from within the person. I think personality scientists disagree.
www.who.int/publications...
www.who.int/publications...
Trivial, but perhaps not universally recognised: simultaneously having more than a few desirable traits is really rare. Fortunately, the reverse is also true—very few of us have more than a few undesirable traits. It's just stats.
In a multivariate space, everyone's ~ average
doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...
In a multivariate space, everyone's ~ average
doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...
December 5, 2024 at 10:58 AM
Trivial, but perhaps not universally recognised: simultaneously having more than a few desirable traits is really rare. Fortunately, the reverse is also true—very few of us have more than a few undesirable traits. It's just stats.
In a multivariate space, everyone's ~ average
doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...
In a multivariate space, everyone's ~ average
doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...
The free, anonymous application to explore jobs that match your personality traits is now also available in Japanese.
Thank you, Okamoto Matsuri!
whichjob.me
Thank you, Okamoto Matsuri!
whichjob.me
November 28, 2024 at 9:06 PM
The free, anonymous application to explore jobs that match your personality traits is now also available in Japanese.
Thank you, Okamoto Matsuri!
whichjob.me
Thank you, Okamoto Matsuri!
whichjob.me