APS runs some of the best conferences to attend, whether you’re a psychologist or not. Even though I’m a statistician by training, I always feel like I come away with dozens of ideas for new ways to apply my expertise, and a few new tricks of the trade being used in different areas! And if there’s any discipline with an abundance of weird science, it’s psychology!
It’s also a chance for me to get together with family. My geekdom is a function of both nature and nurture – I come from a family of geeks who enjoy exploring and researching (my father is into marketing, my mother is a psychologist, and my sister is in public relations and communication), and the APS convention always gives us a chance to collaborate on something interesting.
This year our topic was “Reverse Engineering Leadership,” and we used existing psychology techniques (the Jack Block Q-Sort) to evaluate first impressions of the personalities http://themsbproject.wordpress.com/ various leaders (social media influencers, CEOs, and four-star generals), and to see if there was a leader personality prototype shared across the three types. It turned out that our leaders did share enough personality traits in this small-slice look to qualify for a Q-Sort personality prototype, and while this was interesting, the differences were also extremely interesting. We’re looking forward to putting together and publishing a few interesting papers on the subject!
For more information, check out my sister Karen’s blog on the subject, and see our interview with the APS Observer where we talk about our research!
