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Department of Psychology Personality, Psychopathology, and Assessment Lab

Welcome to the Personality, Psychopathology, and Assessment Lab

 

Broadly, our lab seeks to understand how basic personality structures and processes (e.g., temperament, self-beliefs/schemata, goals, moral standards) contribute to individual differences and to clinical syndromes (e.g., depression, trauma-related disorders, personality disorders, etc.). We are also very interested in applying social cognitive approaches to personality to clinical personality assessment.

The following articles are recommended for undergraduates who are interested in becoming involved in our lab activities:

Scott, W. D., *Paup, S., & Kirchhoff, C. (2021).  Clinical application of social cognitive theory: A novel personality assessment procedure and a case study of personality coherence.  European Journal of Personality. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070211028362

Scott, W. D., Penningroth, S. L., *Paup, S., Li, X., Adams, D., & *Mallory, B. (2021).  The Relational Self-Schema Measure: Assessing psychological needs in multiple self-with-other representations.  Journal of Personality Assessment. DOI:10.1080/00223891.2021.1900207

Scott, W. D., *Tyser, J., Penningroth, S. L., & *Strauch, C. (2022).  Assessing self-schema content: The relationship of psychological needs to early maladaptive schemas, rejection sensitivity, and personality traits.  Self and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2021.1895882

*McDougall, K. H., & Scott, W. D. (2021).  The Self-Efficacy for Parenting Adolescents Scale: Development and Initial Validation.  Journal of Child and Family Studies, 30(9), 2289-2302.

Scott, W. D., & Cervone, D. (2016).  Social cognitive personality assessment: A case conceptualization procedure and illustration.  Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 23, 79-98.

Developing new approaches to assessing personality and conceptualizing clinical cases. Our lab is involved in applying advances in social cognitive theory to personality assessment and clinical case conceptualization (see Scott & Cervone, 2016; Scott, Paup, & Kirchhoff, 2021).  How does one measure temperament, self-schemata, goals, personal/moral standards in a manner that is consistent with how these personality structures are conceptualized in current scientific thinking?  For example, many psychological scientists conceptualize self-schemata as represented in memory in the form of multiple self-with-other representations (e.g., self-with-mom, self-with-friend, etc.).  Recently we have been developing new methods of assessing self-schemata in line with these current conceptualizations of the self (see Scott, Penningroth et al., 2021; Scott, Tyser et al., 2021).

Understanding the role of personality in clinical syndromes, such as depression.  Our lab is also involved in investigating how individual differences in personality structures—temperament, self-schemata, goals and personal standard/moral systems—contribute to clinical syndromes such as depression and trauma-related disorders, as well as in how these disorders can influence these personality structures and processes (see Lindsay et al., 2005; Scott & Cervone, 2002).

A Conversation with Walter Scott

https://www.ejp-blog.com/blog/2021/10/8/a-conversation-with-walter-scott