About Me!
A quick introduction...
My name seems to be plastered everywhere on this website, but in case it's helpful to see again, I'm Amanda (or a bit more commonly known as Aj) :-)
Currently, I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich working in the Individual Differences & Assessment Lab led by Wiebke Bleidorn.
I received my Ph.D. in Psychological & Brain Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis in 2023. During graduate school, I worked with Joshua Jackson (10/10 recommend, and I'm not just saying that because he got me a PhD sword (see 2nd pic), but it was a perk).
Also during graduate school, I learned energy drinks are the best thing for my research (see 3rd pic, they also gave me a bit of life).
My main research interests are personality change, prediction, and development; individual differences in these topics; and how best to model data to answer these questions.
You can find an outline of my education, publications, presentations, and teaching experience below.
For those who are feeling particularly adventurous, more details can be found in my CV.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Academic Positions
University of Zürich (Switzerland), August 2023 – present
Postdoctoral Researcher
Individual Differences and Assessment Lab, Department of Psychology
Supervisor : Wiebke Bleidorn
Education
Washington University in St. Louis, 2019-2023
Ph.D. in Psychological & Brain Sciences (Social & Personality Area)
Graduate Certificate in Quantitative Data Analysis
Advisor : Joshua Jackson
Dissertation title: “Modeling variability in personality development: Quantifying, explaining, and examining the predictive utility of person-specific variance around personality trajectories”
Washington University in St. Louis, 2019-2021
M.A. in Psychological & Brain Sciences (Social & Personality Area)
Advisor : Joshua Jackson
Thesis title: “Person-centered profile consistency: A test of longitudinal personality consistency”
Baylor University, 2015-2019
B.S. in Psychology
Publications
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (in press). Longitudinal within-person variability around personality trajectories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/68hpb
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2024). Is parent personality associated with child outcomes? A response surface analysis approach, 33(2), e2395. Infant and Child Development.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2395
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/ahmzw
Jackson, J. J., & Wright, A. J. (2024). The process and mechanisms of personality change. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1-14.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00295-z
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2024). The associations between life events and person-centered personality consistency. Journal of Personality, 92, 162-179.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12802
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/v2dwz
Jackson, J. J., & Wright, A. J. (2024). Life events don’t change personality (that way) [Invited Commentary and Author Response Regarding ‘Life Events and Personality Change: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis’. (2024)]. European Journal of Personality.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070231211207
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2023). Do changes in personality predict life outcomes? 125(6), 1495-1518. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000472
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/45yj7/
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2023). Initiation of drug and alcohol use and personality development during adolescence. European Journal of Personality, 37(4), 375-401.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070221090107
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/gpsj4/
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2023). Are some people more consistent? Examining the stability and underlying processes of personality profile consistency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(6), 1314–1337.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000429
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/8vt3j/
Wright, A. J., Litwin, A. W., & Jackson, J. J. (2023). Compensatory couple effects: How a spouse’s life goals impact one’s own career and health outcomes. Journal of Research in Personality, 103.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2023.104350
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/jk6ta/
Bancilhon, M., Wright, A. J., Ha, S., Crouser, R. J., & Ottley, A. (2023). Why Combining Text and Visualization Could Improve Bayesian Reasoning: A Cognitive Load Perspective. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 467, 1-15.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581218
Preprint link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.00707
Boone, K., Vogel, A., Tillman, R., Wright, A. J., Barch, D. M., Luby, J. L., & Whalen, D. J. (2022). Identifying moderating factors during the preschool period in the development of borderline personality disorder: A prospective longitudinal analysis. Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-022-00198-6
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2022). Childhood temperament and adulthood personality differentially predict life outcomes. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-9.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14666-0
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/48xjr/
Wright, A. J., Weston, S. J., Norton, S., Voss, M., Bogdan, R., Oltmanns, T. F., & Jackson, J. J. (2022). Prospective self- and informant personality associations with inflammation, health behaviors, and health indicators. Health Psychology, 41(2), 121–133.
Peer-reviewed publication link: https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0001162
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/2hgps/
Manuscripts under Review
Luking, K., Hennefield, L., Ortin-Peralta, A., Wright, A. J., & Whalen, D. (2024). Early Pubertal Timing Predicts Suicidality and Self-Injurious Behaviors in Preadolescents: Evidence for Concurrent and New-Onset Risk. Under initial review.
Preprint link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zsq2d
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2024). Individual differences in the forms of personality trait trajectories. In revision at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Preprint link: https://psyarxiv.com/jvm54
Puricelli, A., Wright, A. J., Gilbert, K., Vogel, A. C., Barch, D., Luby, J., & Whalen, D. J. (2023). Preschool Big Five personality traits and childhood peer relationships predict BPD but not MDD in late adolescence. Under initial review.
Invited Talks
European Conference on Personality, August 2024
Symposium titled "Promises and challenges of personality interventions" during the European Conference on Personality (ECP).
Title: "An individual difference approach to personality interventions"
Workshop on Methods for Studying the Consequences of Life Events, Cologne, Germany, June 2024
Presentation for the 2nd annual methods workshop in this series
Title: "Longitudinal within-person variability around personality trajectories"
University of California, Davis, February 2023
Brown Bag for Quantitative Psychology Area in the Department of Psychology
Title: "Do changes in personality predict life outcomes?"
Personality Science Preconference, SPSP, February 2023
Symposium for featured articles in a special issue of Journal of Personality
Title: "The associations between life events and person-centered personality consistency"
Conference Presentations
Wright, A. J. & Bleidorn, W. (September 2024). Identifying person-level change processes to create a general personality change framework. Symposium presentation for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie (German Psychological Society; DGPs). Vienna, Austria.
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (February 2024). Modeling variability in personality development: Quantifying, explaining, and examining the predictive utility of person-specific variance around personality trajectories. Oral presentation for SPSP. San Diego, CA.
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (September 2023). Do changes in personality predict life outcomes? Oral presentation for Differentielle Psychologie, Persönlichkeitspsychologie, und Psychologische Diagnostik (DPPD). Salzburg, Austria. (https://osf.io/dr7ys)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (July 2023). The paths to Pareto: Examining links between early risk factors, intermediary pathways, and future life outcomes. Poster for Association for Research in Personality (ARP). Evanston, IL (https://osf.io/s5rzd)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (February 2023). The associations between life events and person-centered personality consistency. Oral presentation during a symposium titled, “Narrow and Broad Conceptualizations of Environmental Influences on Personality” during the Personality Science preconference for Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). Atlanta, GA (https://osf.io/d6vz9)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (July 2022). The impact of life events on ipsative trajectories of person-centered personality consistency. Oral presentation for European Conference of Personality (ECP), Madrid, Spain (https://osf.io/gybp2)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (July 2022). Initiation of drug and alcohol use and personality development during adolescence. Poster presentation for ECP. Madrid, Spain (https://osf.io/erj97)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (February 2022). Does personality change matter? A mega-analysis of personality change predicting future life outcomes. Poster for SPSP. San Francisco, CA (https://osf.io/ap7w6)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (July 2021). Longitudinal patterns of person-centered personality consistency: An investigation using individual profile correlations. Data blitz presentation for ARP. Virtual (https://osf.io/ptjfc)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (July 2021). Are adult-based personality predictions improved by temperament measures from childhood? Poster for ARP. Virtual (https://osf.io/xym8v)
Wright, A. J. (February 2021). Prospective self- and informant-personality associations with inflammation, health behaviors, and health indicators. Oral presentation during a symposium titled, “The Nuanced Relationship Between Individual Differences and Health” for SPSP. Virtual (https://osf.io/cp2md)
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (February 2020). Utilizing self- and other-reports of personality to better predict health biomarkers. Poster presentation for SPSP. New Orleans, LA (https://osf.io/ukyzw)
Teaching Experience
Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Teaching Assistant (TA) / Assistant in Instruction (AI)
Introductory Psychological Statistics, Fall 2022
Quantitative Methods II (graduate course), Spring 2022
Health Psychology, Fall 2021
Hierarchical Linear Models (graduate course), Spring 2021
Experimental Psychology, Fall 2020