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Guest Speaker: Dr René Mõttus “Why care about truly predictive research, besides descriptive and explanatory (personality) research?”
Dr René Mõttus, from Edinburgh University, will be speaking on
Why care about truly predictive research, besides descriptive and explanatory (personality) research?
Host: Professor Anu Realo
Abstract: The talk will be based on a recent paper that distinguishes between three main kinds of personality research: description, prediction and explanation (psyarxiv.com/hvk5p). The paper proposes some not-necessarily-intuitive ideas regarding the different aims and methodologies of these research kinds, and explains the tensions between them. In the talk, I will argue that explanatory research may be over-rated and has under-delivered, whereas descriptive research, while often under-appreciated, has been a triumph with yet more to come. Most importantly, I will argue that predictive research is often confused with other research kinds and under-trained, but may hold the greatest growth potential once we adopt a data-driven approach and machine learning principles, and forego the expectation that predictive models be theoretically intuitive and / or descriptively elegant. The talk is mostly about personality research, but the ideas apply to other psychology fields as well.
BIOGRAPHY: Rene is a Reader of Individual Differences in the University of Edinburgh and currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Personality. The team recently started Personality Psychology Podcast. Publications are at http://tiny.cc/a0dwtz.
See archive of Previous speakers here