Bernd Schäfer

A year ago, 20 German personality psychologists came together under the leadership of John Rauthmann to assess the status of the field (not only from a German perspective). An English-language version of this paper (in press at Psychologische Rundschau) is now available:

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New paper in PsychScience: Partial election results fuel fraud beliefs via cumulative redundancy bias. Early leaders are favored; late flips spark suspicion. 7 studies, including 2020 GA data, show this persists despite explanations. @moritzingendahl.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Network results for Study 2 (Dynamics across days)

Network results for Study 1 (Dynamics within days)

We discuss theoretical implications for the dynamic regulation of social needs, especially regarding temporal processes and the role of positive affect in predicting social contact. Finally, we delineate future directions of multi-method research into daily-life social dynamics.

In contrast, at a daily timescale, social desire did not predict future contact. Bidirectional linkages of affect and social contact were also much denser hourly (vs. daily). Compared to in-person contact, calls and communication app usage generally showed distinct associations with affect.

Results were highly specific to the examined time scale. When measured at an hourly timescale, people desired more social contact than usual when they engaged in more in-person contact, and higher social desire predicted more future social contact in both experience sampling and smartphone sensing.

We used network models to analyze data from two separate studies based on experience sampling and unobtrusive smartphone sampling with roughly hourly assessments across 2 days (N = 303) and daily assessments across 14 days (N = 377).

New preprint: osf.io/8c6sz_v1
@mdkraemer.bsky.social and I, with our fantastic co-authors Cornelia Wrzus, Yannick Roos and @drichter77.bsky.social examined how social contact, desire, and affect dynamically interact across different modalities (in-person, digital) and time scales (hourly, daily).

Together with @maikeluhmann.bsky.social and bluesky-less Ricarda Steinmayr, Marcus Roth, Miriam Schmitz, and Alicia Neumann.

Preprint ALERT!

We used data from the GLUECK study to explore network dynamics in the subjective well-being of adolescents. Our findings highlight the central role of school satisfaction and strong links between domain satisfaction and affective well-being.

Check it out: osf.io/preprints/os...

Be sure to check out Debbi's first first author paper on who stays lonely and who doesn't following social loss events!

Map showing percentages of young people reporting at least moderate loneliness in different European countries. The EU average is 57%.

Cover of new report on youth loneliness in Europe in 2024

#Loneliness is still widespread among young people in Europe. In a new study for @bertelsmannst.bsky.social, we found that in 2024, 57% of youth in Europe are at least moderately lonely.

With @berndschaefer.bsky.social and Ricarda Steinmayr

Links to full reports (German / English) in next posts.

The perception of major life events across the life course To better understand the effects of life events, research interest recently turned to the question of how life events are perceived (e.g., as positive, predictable, or controllable). However, research...

The question I've got asked most frequently at conferences when I was presenting something on the perception of life events was whether there are any age differences.

Using data from the SOEP-IS, we addressed this simple but interessting question.

Open-access link: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

I'm very humbled and extremely happy to announce that my research will be supported by an #ERC Consolidator Grant in the next 5 years. More soon!

A systematic review of volitional personality change research - Communications Psychology Meta-analytic evidence finds interventions aimed at altering personality traits were successful in promoting change. A review of nonintervention studies, finds having the goal to change personality is...

Can people intentionally change their personality?

Happy to share that our review on volitional personality change research has now been published at Nature Communications.

Open-Access-Link: doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Check out this recently published paper lead-authored by my PhD colleague Yannick Roos (who's not on Bluesky): doi.org/10.1037/pspp...
We examined in 2 studies how contextual social factors (e.g., neighborhood, household composition) relate to differential regulation of social interactions in daily

You can check out the final preprint for more details: osf.io/preprints/ps... (7/7)

Our findings underscore the importance of considering domain satisfaction as a key factor in understanding SWB. By applying psychometric network models, we hope to advance how we think about the structure and dynamics of well-being (6/7)

Interestingly, the dynamic relationships of SWB were very similar across different age groups in middle adulthood (5/7)

We found that the relationship between life satisfaction and domain satisfaction wasn’t one-directional (top-down or bottom-up). Instead, it was characterized by reciprocal connections (4/7)

From the domains considered, family, work, and income satisfaction tended to be the most central, highlighting their importance in overall well-being (3/7)

We used network modeling to analyze SWB dynamics across the lifespan. This is one of the first attempts to apply this method to a large, representative dataset (SOEP), capturing over 32,000 adults (2/7)

I am very excited to announce that my first first-author publication was accepted at JPSP: doi.org/10.1037/pspp...
Thank you, @peterhaehner.bsky.social and @maikeluhmann.bsky.social, for your incredible support! Here is what we found: (1/7)

I am very happy to share my debut research article on PsyArXiv! You can find our findings on network dynamics of subjective well-being here: osf.io/preprints/ps.... Many thanks to my amazing co-authors @peterhaehner.bsky.social and @maikeluhmann.bsky.social for their invaluable support.