[fleesonw@wfu.edu]
Ollen R. Nalley Associate Professor of Psychology
(336) 758-4232
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Education
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B.A.,
University of Wisconsin, 1987 |
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Ph.D.,
University of Michigan, 1992 |
Major
Area:
Personality
Research
interests:
A significant feature of the human condition is that it is not at
all clear how to live life, yet something must be tried. Some of
the efforts add to successful, satisfying lives, while others lead
to dead ends, frustrated hopes, and wasted resources. My fascination
with this feature of the human condition has led me to the study
of self-regulation: what people do, try to do, and are able to do
to improve the quality of their lives.
What are people trying to do?
In this line
of research, I typically ask subjects what goals they are pursuing
and how they think about
them, and then examine how these goals show up in their daily life
and cause them to act or feel certain ways. Subjects carry Palm
Pilots with them for two weeks and describe what is going on around
them
and in their own heads every few hours.
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Fleeson,
W., Malanos, A., & Achille, N. (2002). An
intra-individual, process approach to the relationship between
extraversion and positive affect: Is acting extraverted as "good" as
being extraverted? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1409-1422. |
What works
to create high quality of life?
One important starting question
is whether it is one’s circumstances or what one makes of them
that is important for a high quality life. I try to determine the
relative importance of objective circumstances (e.g., income, status,
health) and of internal psychological factors (e.g., personality,
subjective evaluation of objective circumstances) in predicting life
quality.
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Fleeson,
W. (2004). The quality of American life at the
turn of the century. In O.G. Brim, C.D. Ryff, & R.C.
Kessler (Eds.), How healthy are we?: A national study of
well-being at midlife (pp. 252-272). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press |
How variable is personality?
The power of
internal psychological factors in producing life quality suggests
changing
internal psychological factors may be the most productive way to improve life quality.
However, because change can be seen as the opposite of stability,
and stability can be seen as necessary for identity or even for
the existence of personality, change and stability are in perpetual
tension.
As a result, I turned towards investigating the potential for,
and the causes and the consequences of, personality change, both
in the
long-term and in the short-term. Thus, my work in this direction
is relevant to basic questions of personality psychology: What
is identity? Can personality change? Does personality exist?
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Fleeson, W. (2001). Towards a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 1011-1027. |
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Fleeson, W. (2004). Moving personality beyond the person-situation debate: The challenge and the opportunity of within-person variability. Current Directions, 13, 83-87. |
Scholarly Interests:
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Personality |
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Motivation
and Self-Regulation |
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Well-Being |
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Self-Concept |
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Behavioral Consistency |
Courses
taught:
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Personality
Research |
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Research
Methods I |
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Research
Methods II |
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Seminar in Personality |
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