Note: To respect academic integrity and peer-review processes, detailed descriptions of ongoing research/manuscripts will be updated as they reach publication.

Re-engineering Online Self-Assessments (OSAs)
With: Anna Wollny (U Potsdam)

In German-speaking higher education, “Online Self-Assessments” (scare quotes to note the pseudo-anglicism) are widely used to guide prospective uni applicants in their decision-making process. However, many existing systems rely on “suitability scores” derived from flawed norming data, a practice that ignores the statistical reality that human potential rarely follows a straight line. Anna and I initiated a fundamental redesign of these tools at the University of Potsdam. We pivoted from a norm-oriented selection model to a criterion or construct-oriented self-efficacy model.

We thus moved away from the idea of having an algorithm tell prospective applicants whether they were “suitable” (a claim often undermined by the statistical reality of scatterplots and high error margins) and toward a model of transparency. By providing realistic previews of course content, specific university-track tasks, and self-reflection tools, our goal was to empower applicants to align their expectations with reality. We thus replaced “scores” with “insights”, ensuring that students entered their programs not because a series of vaguely relevant tests told them to, but because they understood the challenges ahead.

Self-control at work
With: Erik Dietl (Loughborough U)

The numerous benefits of trait self-control are well-documented, but the actual exertion of self-control within situations has some major open questions. We ran a complex experience-sampling study with the aim of pitting two conflicting assumptions against each other.

A secondary aim of the project was to test the effects of state mindfulness on self-control within situations.

Room atmosphere
With: Erik Dietl (Loughborough U) and Anna Steidle (U Ludwigsburg)

Our first manuscript on the effects of room atmosphere on performance is currently looking for a home, so I hope to be able to update this space once that has been achieved.

I also explored a follow-up study on the person-environment fit between room atmosphere and personality traits, which I mention here primarily to showcase a brief dalliance with Response Surface Analysis, and to feign a level of methodological breadth that my publication record hasn’t quite caught up with.

Self-fulfilment
With: John Rauthmann (LMU München)

With this project, we aimed to map the surprisingly understudied construct of self-fulfilment; a lofty goal that was eventually sidelined by the inconvenient reality of our respective careers. While John was busy with the small task of moving across continents and speed-running his ascension through the academic ranks, I was busy perfecting the art of pre-doctoral project juggling.

Sidenote: The path towards this project remains my favourite bit of academic indie street cred (seriously, look up John’s recent work and stations), even though it made the least progress overall. I trekked all the way to Winston-Salem in North Carolina to visit him at Wake Forest University to keep the momentum alive, but the project ultimately proved as elusive as the construct itself. John, if you’re reading this: I’m officially back on the market to pick up the pieces! Also, what are you doing here?

Authenticity and the Dark Tetrad of personality
With: John Rauthmann (LMU München)

Authenticity is generally associated with subjective well-being, while the “dark” sub-clinical personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism evince “positive” correlations with more aggressive behavioural tendencies. My master’s thesis project (under John’s supervision) explored some situations in which these variables could be related. However, considering the complex study design and high number of tests and interactions (and the danger of false positives), I later started a pre-registered streamlined follow-up in order to determine the replicability of the findings. As this project was neither funded nor relevant to my later research, data collection fizzled out before I achieved the statistical power I was aiming for.

Positive interventions
With: Albert Liau (NIE, Singapore)

My undergraduate thesis project was concerned with “positive” (behavioural/cognitive) interventions meant to increase happiness and decrease depressive symptoms (as opposed to the classical approaches that focused on fixing deficits). The one-week gratitude- and strengths-based interventions that I conducted showed positive effects across two post-intervention assessments in comparison to a control group. Looking at the project as an outsider, I would be more critical about the fact that the control group wasn’t given a placebo intervention (although to be fair, it was an undergraduate project without an overarching research programme or any funding). This limitation is slightly offset by the observation that the control group recorded decreasing happiness and increasing depressive symptoms across the course of the semester, suggesting that the intervention groups (consisting of students who were part of the same cohort) may have benefited from a buffer of sorts. Having said that, a lot of the existing studies on positive interventions have even poorer study designs and drastically oversell many of the findings, which is why I am glad to continue to review manuscripts that address such interventions (+ related topics) for multiple journals whenever I am asked despite not actively working on projects of my own at the moment.

If my lack of “faith” in this area of research hasn’t quelled your interest, here’s a 2012 TEDx talk by Dr. Liau, in which he also cites our work together.