Society for Personality Assessment

Justin D. Smith
President

I am a fifth year student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Tennessee and I am currently completing my internship at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver. In July, I will be moving to Eugene, Oregon to start a two-year NIMH research fellowship in Development and Psychopathology at the Child and Family Center at the U of O. My primary research and clinical interest is Therapeutic Assessment (TA). I have worked and conducted research with children and families as well as adult clients using the TA model. My other research interests are the evaluation of interventions using single-case experimental research designs, the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices, and familial factors affecting clinical services and outcomes with children and adolescents. In my free time (not much on internship!) I enjoy all things outdoors, including trail running, mountain biking, hiking, and backpacking. But relaxation and recuperation time is also at a premium and I take advantage of days that allow me to just hang out with friends.

As President of SPAGS, I hope to continue to provide the student membership with training and research opportunities in personality assessment. The SPA annual meeting is a unique venue for introductory and advanced trainings in specific assessment instruments and models of assessment. The meeting also exposes students to the cutting-edge research being conducted by the experts in the field. SPA supports its student members as well as any professional society in psychology through travel grants for presenters at the annual meeting, dissertation research grants, awards for poster presentations, and the Mary S. Cerney Award, which recognizes outstanding student research in personality assessment. SPA is a very student-friendly organization.

Katherine M. Thomas
President-Elect 
I am currently enrolled in my second year of doctoral study in clinical psychology at Michigan State University. My research interests are wide-ranging and ever-developing, but they all fall under the umbrella of integrating personality theory with measurement and understanding the myriad and nuanced ways in which personality assessment informs clinical research and practice. I am particularly interested in integrating various personality models and measurement methods in ways that increment one another for understanding the personality context of psychopathology. My additional research interests include the measurement of dynamic personality processes, delineating effective mechanisms of psychotherapy and assessment, interpersonal pathoplasticity, and the utility of evaluating normative personality traits and processes in clinical research and practice.

Clinically, I believe personality assessment can be effectively used to inform treatment approaches, and am particularly drawn to such approaches based in the interpersonal tradition. I am also interested in the therapeutic power of effective personality assessment. These interests are principally based in my belief that personality assessment is an ideal way to maintain the humanness of therapeutic endeavors by allowing clinicians to better understand the person with pathology, and not just the pathology a person has.

Aidan G. C. Wright, Past President
Past President

I am an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Michigan State University. My doctoral training occurred at Texas A&M University, and my clinical internship was at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

My main research interest involves understanding relationships between personality and psychopathology. In particular, I am interested in testing diathetic (which propose that personality ‘causes’ psychopathology) and pathoplastic (which propose that personality is meaningfully independent of psychopathology) models, and the implications of these distinctions for etiology, longitudinal change, interpersonal and affective manifestations of disordered behavior, assessment, and clinical outcomes.

I am also interested in applied clinical assessment. My research focuses primarily on self-report instruments that were explicitly developed to measure clinical and personality constructs: such instruments include the PAI, the IIP, and the NEO-PI-R. I am also interested in the assessment process, and in particular the potential for clinical change through therapeutic assessment. These interests also guide my clinical work.

I spend as much free time as possible with my son Sullivan (pictured) and partner Emily, and watching our basketball team dominate the Big Ten.

Josh Eblin
Secretary

It is an honor to serve as the SPAGS Secretary position for the upcoming year. I would like to provide some information about myself. I obtained a B.A. in psychology from Ohio State in 2009. I am now in my second year of graduate training at the University of Toledo as a clinical psychology student. My mentor is Dr. Greg Meyer and I also work closely with Dr. Joni Mihura in the Personality Assessment Lab at the University of Toledo. I have been a member of SPA since beginning graduate school last year and I served as the editorial assistant for the Journal of Personality Assessment through my first year of graduate training. As part of my professional development, I worked as a TA for a graduate-level class in cognitive assessment. I would ultimately like to pursue a career as a forensic psychologist that involves both research and clinical assessment. More specifically, I am interested in assessing personality via implicit methods. I am primarily interested in the assessment of psychosis and psychopathy.

Michael Roche
Member-at-Large

I am currently a second year graduate student in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Pennsylvania State University. While my research interests continue to take shape, I have been particularly fascinated with the intersection of personality assessment and intensive repeated measures longitudinal designs.  These designs allow us to examine how personality is expressed through an individual’s emotions, thoughts, and relationships with others, and also challenges us to think critically about when and how often personality should be assessed. I am particularly interested in how personality disorders (e.g. Narcissism, Dependency) and interpersonal patterns/dynamics shape the way individuals experience and relate to their world. These topics have obvious extensions into clinical work, providing a synergistic tether between research and practice. 

 
Lesley Hiebing
Member-at-Large

I am currently a third-year clinical psychology doctoral student at Kent State University, where I am specializing in psychological assessment.  In the fall semester I was a teaching fellow and taught an undergraduate course in personality psychology.  Additionally, I am participating in two practicum experiences at Kent State; couple’s therapy and neuropsychological assessment. 
My primary research interests are non-credible responding on self-report measures, and therapeutic assessment.  I am interested in improving our ability as clinicians to detect invalid responding by investigating potential psychological correlates of individuals who implement a non-credible response style.  Therapeutic assessment is another research interest of mine, and I plan to make it the focus of my dissertation. When I get the chance, I enjoy bicycling, watching movies, and trying out new recipes—especially desserts.  I also need to find a way to squeeze in some wedding planning, which should be a lot of fun!

 
Christy Denckla
Member-at-Large

I joined the SPAGS board as a second year doctoral candidate in clinical psychology with Adelphi University in New York. Broadly speaking, my research focuses on interpersonal processes that function as either risk or resilience factors following loss or trauma. Specifically, I am interested in the behavioral and neural correlates of adaptive distancing. I believe that self construal systems explain a largely unexplored amount of variance in predicting response to loss and trauma, and I plan to probe that variance using quantitative and experimental methods for my dissertation. My research interests are informed by previous clinical experience as a Spanish speaking mental health counselor working with culturally diverse men, women, and children who have experienced abuse and trauma.