Rene Mottus

Reader

  • Psychology
  • School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Contact details

Address

Street

Room S4, Psychology Building

City
7 George Square, Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9JZ

Availability

  • I am available at most times. Just pop into my room (S4) or drop me an email to arrange a meeting.

Biography

Background

I completed my BSc (2003), MSc (2005) and PhD (2009) in the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Having also worked as a clinical psychologist in a psychiatry clinic, I decided to fully  embark on an academic career.

Between 2010 and 2013, I was a post-doctoral researcher (and senior researcher) with the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology.

In 2013, I started as a lecturer in the Department of Psychology.

Undergraduate teaching

I am teaching on human personality.

Consultation hours

I am around most of the time. Just pop in or send me an email to arrange a meeting.

Postgraduate teaching

I am teaching MSc core course on intelligence.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

For both undergraduate and postgraduate students, I offer supervision topics related to human personality.

Current PhD students supervised

Research summary

I am interested in various topics related to human personality.

Specifically, I am thinking on how to most efficiently represent human personality. When should we employ broader and when narrower characteristics for this? We have worked on nuances as most fundamental units of personality variance.

How could we combine variability within individuals over time and varability between individuals into the same framework?

I am also interested in personality development and behaviour genetics. For example, we have delineated age-trends in the magnitude of personality variance and the genetic and environmental contributions to these.

Also, I have an interest in developing computational models of personality processes, and delineating the causes and consequences of personality variability within and between individuals.

Occasionally, I also err on the other major side of individual differences -- intelligence.

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