Individual differences

Differential Psychology explores the ways in which people differ from one another, alongside their measurement, causes and consequences.

World leading work in Edinburgh focuses on a broad range of topics, including lifelong personality development, measurement and links with important life outcomes; cognitive abilities (intelligence) alongside their change (including ageing) and links with life outcomes; psychopathology; primate psychology; and positive psychology.

Research is published in prestigious journals, often in collaboration with graduate students.

The work involves a wide range of techniques, including reanalysing data from existing large databases, large-scale data collections, multinational collaborations and advanced statistical modelling. Graduate students can take part in vibrant journal clubs and join a large research community with links across many countries.

People

Staff working in this area include:

		Research interests
	Dr Rene Mottus Programme Director	Personality development in childhood and later life, computational modelling of person-environment transactions, within-individual variability of personality and its associations with situational circumstances and specific behaviours, and psychometrics.
	Professor Tim Bates	Genetics, Cognitive epidemiology, Cognitive potential, Personality, Group behavior, Dyslexia, Language impairment.
	Dr Tom Booth	Individual Differences, Health & Quantitative Methods.
	Professor Wendy Johnson	Individual differences: the structure of intelligence and personality, life-span development of intelligence and personality, health and ageing, genetic and environmental transactions and their influence on behaviour, intelligence, and personality.
	Dr Michelle Luciano	Environmental and genetic factors contributing to cognition, personality and mood.
	Dr Aja Murray	Developmental aspects of mental health phenotypes and their comorbidity: in particular, ADHD, autism, and conduct problems; quantitative methodology.
	Professor Caroline Watt	Replication and methodological issues in parapsychology.
	Dr Alexander Weiss	Personality and subjective well-being in humans, nonhuman primates, and other animals; the evolution of personality and subjective well-being; ageing and development; behaviour genetics; differential epidemiology; quantitative methods.