René Mõttus
Biographic Data
| ID | 130045 |
|---|---|
| NAME | René Mõttus |
| GIVEN NAMES | René |
| FAMILY NAME | Mõttus |
| SIGNATURE | MÕTTUS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tartu |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6403-5224 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 167 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Loneliness and Personality: Noise‐ and Bias‐Free True Correlations Between Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Domains
Objective While loneliness is intertwined with many mental and physical health problems, its origins are not yet well understood. We sought to better understand its link to personality in a large national cohort. Methods Combining self‐ and informant ratings in multiple samples, we conducted the largest study to date to examine loneliness' true correlations ( r true s) with the Big Five personality traits, free of single‐method biases and transie…
Speaking of gender: Language genderedness and its association with gender differences in personality across 48 languages
Previous studies have suggested that personality assessments can be influenced by the language people speak. Therefore, gendered ways of thinking, feeling and behaving may be associated with gendered structures encoded in different languages. Here, we study the association be-tween gender differences in personality traits as measured by the IPIP-NEO (n = 755,307; rep-resenting 48 languages from 122 countries, with English being the language of as…
Does a Small Country Have Meaningful Regional Personality Differences? The Case of Estonia
BACKGROUND: Regional differences in the Big Five personality domains have been observed in several countries at different geographical granularities, often correlating with regional political, economic, social, and health (PESH) indicators. OBJECTIVE: We examined the extent of regional personality differences in Estonia and whether these differences were meaningfully correlated with PESH indicators. METHODS: Using data from the Estonian Biobank (…
Nuanced Hexaco: A Meta-Analysis of Hexaco Cross-Rater Agreement, Heritability, and Rank-Order Stability
Most Five-Factor Model (FFM) questionnaire items contain unique variance that is partly heritable, stable, and consensually observable, demonstrates consistent associations with age and sex, and predicts life outcomes beyond higher order factors. Extending these findings to the HEXACO model, we meta-analyzed single-item cross-rater agreement, heritability, and 2-year stability using samples from six countries. We analyzed raw item scores and thei…
Construct Validity, Longitudinal Measurement Invariance, Incremental Validity, and Predictive Validity of the Original Grit Scale in Chinese Young Adults
Although many studies have attempted to validate grit scales because of the construct's popularity, most have considered the shorter rather than the longer Original Grit Scale (Grit-O). We examined the Grit-O's construct validity, longitudinal measurement invariance, incremental validity for academic performance, and longitudinal predictive validity for subjective well-being among young Chinese. We used a cross-sectional sample of 3,322 college s…
There are a million ways to be a woman and a million ways to be a man: Gender differences across personality nuances and nations
Items designed to assess the same traits often vary in their gender differences. • Gender can be very accurately predicted from (multivariate) item sets. • But (univariate) trait scores cannot be accurately predicted from gender. • Cultures vary in traits’ gender differences. • Each gender can correspond to countless trait configurations. Gender differences in personality are typically summarised using broad trait domains. To acknowledge personal…
Familial similarity and heritability of personality traits and life satisfaction are higher than shown in typical single-method studies
Personality trait similarity among ordinary relatives is surprisingly low, with parent-offspring and sibling-sibling correlations usually r ≤ .15. We explain why these correlations are biased in typical single-method studies and argue that this problem can only be addressed with multimethod designs. We also explain why ordinary relative comparisons can provide a more generalizable way of estimating (additive, narrow-sense) heritability than the b…
Using multi-rater and test-retest data to detect overlap within and between psychological scales
The ways of the world? Cross-sample replicability of personality trait-life outcome associations
Across three culturally diverse samples, lower order traits out-predicted multiple life outcomes than broad traits, such as domains. • Predictive accuracy of all levels was stronger in the English-speaking sample. • Narrow traits showed stronger predictive accuracy even when predicting outcomes from culturally different sample – suggesting a degree of universality to findings. • Individual trait associations were slightly more replicable for doma…
Most people's life satisfaction matches their personality traits: True correlations in multitrait, multirater, multisample data
70 and its longitudinal associations with personality traits mirrored cross-sectional ones. We conclude that without common measurement limitations, most people's life satisfaction is highly consistent with their personality traits, even across many years. So, satisfaction is usually shaped by these same relatively stable factors that shape personality traits more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Test-Retest Reliability and Construct Validity of the Brief Dark Triad Measurements
Despite the widespread use of the Dirty Dozen (DD) and Short Dark Triad (SD3) as inventories for antagonist personality constructs, appropriately powered studies on their test-retest reliability (rtt) are lacking. We report the 12-day rtt-s of the DD and SD3 scales. Leveraging the test-retest data, we also calculated their convergent and discriminant correlations while controlling for measurement error. Median rtt-s were .87 and .90 (N = 500) for…
Social expectations and abilities to meet them as possible mechanisms of youth personality development
OBJECTIVE: Personality traits change from childhood through late-adolescence, however the effects of social expectations and self-regulatory efforts remain unknown. This study aims to explore mechanisms underlying personality development by assessing mean levels personality traits from childhood to late-adolescence. METHOD: We used Common-Language California Child Q-Set to measure youths' (N = 11,000) mean personality trait levels; social expecta…
Body mass predicts personality development across 18 years in middle to older adulthood
OBJECTIVE: Various personality traits have longitudinal relations with body mass index (BMI), a measure of body weight and a risk factor for numerous health concerns. We tested these associations' compatibility with causality in either direction. METHOD: = 53.33 at baseline), we tested how accurately the Five-Factor Model personality domains and their items could collectively predict BMI and change in it with elastic net models. With multilevel m…
Social expectations as a possible mechanism for adult personality change: Limited empirical evidence for the social investment principle
OBJECTIVE: Personality traits change in both mean levels and variance across the life span but the mechanisms underlying these developmental trends remain unclear. Social Investment Principle (SIP) suggests that social expectations drive personality changes in adulthood. Accordingly, we tested whether differences between personality traits in social expectations for them can explain their different change trajectories in young adulthood. METHODS:…
The genetic basis of eating behaviors
Do Grittier People Have Greater Subjective Well-Being? A Meta-Analysis
The present study conducted a meta-analysis to examine the relation between grit and subjective well-being (SWB). The association between grit (i.e., overall grit, perseverance of effort, and consistency of interest) and SWB (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, happiness, depression, life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and school satisfaction) were synthesized across 83 studies and 66,518 participants. The results based on a random-effects m…
The finer details? The predictability of life outcomes from Big Five domains, facets, and nuances
Associations between personality traits and life outcomes are usually studied using the Big Five domains and, occasionally, their facets. But recent research suggests these associations may be driven by the items (reflecting personality nuances) chosen to measure these traits. Using a large dataset ( N = 6126), we examined associations with 53 self‐reported outcomes using domains, facets and items (markers for nuances), training and validating mo…
Temporal associations between objectively measured physical activity and depressive symptoms: An experience sampling study
Individuals with higher levels of depressive symptoms may benefit from physical activity. While the effects were strongest for physical activity immediately before the mood ratings, the effects were in the same direction for up to 3 h before the mood ratings
Mapping eating and obesity in a behavioural atlas of 229 diseases and phenotypes
Beyond BMI: Personality traits’ associations with adiposity and metabolic rate
Age differences in personality traits and social desirability: A multi-rater multi-sample study
Big Five facets' associations with pro‐environmental attitudes and behaviors
Climate change mandates us to understand why individuals do (not) behave pro‐environmentally and personality traits are well suited for this purpose. Past research has mostly focused on how broad domain‐level personality traits were associated with pro‐environmental attitudes and behaviors. In two datasets ( N = 501 and 287), we examined whether personality facets provided a more detailed picture of how personality traits were associated with pro…
Mapping eating and obesity in a behavioural atlas of 181 diseases and phenotypes
Age differences in the personality hierarchy: A multi-sample replication study across the life span
Development is in the details: Age differences in the Big Five domains, facets, and nuances
65) predictions were more accurate. Less than 15% of the sample was needed to train models to their optimal accuracy. Residualizing the 300 items for all facets had no impact on their predictive accuracy, suggesting that age differences in specific behaviors, thoughts, and feelings (i.e., items) were not because of domains and facets but mostly unique to nuances. These findings replicated in a multisample dataset tested with another questionnaire…
State of the aRt personality research: A tutorial on network analysis of personality data in R
Personality traits below facets: The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances
It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 it…
Cross-rater agreement on common and specific variance of personality scales and items
Personality characteristics below facets: A replication and meta-analysis of cross-rater agreement, rank-order stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances
How people see others is different from how people see themselves: A replicable pattern across cultures
Consensus studies from 4 cultures--in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Germany--as well as secondary analyses of self- and observer-reported Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) data from 29 cultures suggest that there is a cross-culturally replicable pattern of difference between internal and external perspectives for the Big Five personality traits. People see themselves as more neurotic and open to experience compared to how t…
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries
The current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants …
Variance determines self-observer agreement on the Big Five personality traits
Does personality vary across ability levels? A study using self and other ratings
On the street where you live: Neighbourhood deprivation and quality of life among community-dwelling older people in Edinburgh, Scotland
Development is in the details: Age differences in the Big Five domains, facets, and nuances
65) predictions were more accurate. Less than 15% of the sample was needed to train models to their optimal accuracy. Residualizing the 300 items for all facets had no impact on their predictive accuracy, suggesting that age differences in specific behaviors, thoughts, and feelings (i.e., items) were not because of domains and facets but mostly unique to nuances. These findings replicated in a multisample dataset tested with another questionnaire…
Neuroticism and Extraversion in youth predict mental wellbeing and life satisfaction 40 years later
Correlates of personality trait levels and their changes in very old age: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1921
"Personality Profiles and the "Russian Soul: Literary and Scholarly Views Evaluated
Many domestic and foreign observers have claimed that Russians have a unique constellation of personality traits that mirrors their distinctive historical and cultural experience. To examine the hypothesized uniqueness of Russian personality, members of the Russian Character and Personality Survey collected data from 39 samples in 33 administrative areas of the Russian Federation. Respondents ( N = 7,065) identified an ethnically Russian adult or…
An attempt to validate national mean scores of Conscientiousness: No necessarily paradoxical findings
Most people's life satisfaction matches their personality traits: True correlations in multitrait, multirater, multisample data
70 and its longitudinal associations with personality traits mirrored cross-sectional ones. We conclude that without common measurement limitations, most people's life satisfaction is highly consistent with their personality traits, even across many years. So, satisfaction is usually shaped by these same relatively stable factors that shape personality traits more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Obesity has limited behavioural overlap with addiction and psychiatric phenotypes
Does national character reflect mean personality traits when both are measured by the same instrument
Accuracy of only children stereotype
Kids becoming less alike: A behavioral genetic analysis of developmental increases in personality variance from childhood to adolescence
Recent work in personality development has indicated that the magnitude of individual differences in personality increases over child development. Do such patterns reflect the differentiation of individuals by genotype, an increasing influence of environmental factors, or some (interactive) combination of the two? Using a population-based sample of over 2,500 twins and multiples from the Texas Twin Project, we estimated age trends in the variance…
Within- and between individual variability of personality characteristics and physical exercise
Does a Small Country Have Meaningful Regional Personality Differences? The Case of Estonia
BACKGROUND: Regional differences in the Big Five personality domains have been observed in several countries at different geographical granularities, often correlating with regional political, economic, social, and health (PESH) indicators. OBJECTIVE: We examined the extent of regional personality differences in Estonia and whether these differences were meaningfully correlated with PESH indicators. METHODS: Using data from the Estonian Biobank (…
Using multi-rater and test-retest data to detect overlap within and between psychological scales
Age differences in personality traits and social desirability: A multi-rater multi-sample study
Does personality vary across ability levels? A study using self and other ratings
Accuracy of only children stereotype
Pathological Gambling in Estonia: Relationships with Personality, Self-Esteem, Emotional States and Cognitive Ability
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries
The current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants …
An attempt to validate national mean scores of Conscientiousness: No necessarily paradoxical findings
Does national character reflect mean personality traits when both are measured by the same instrument
Variance determines self-observer agreement on the Big Five personality traits
How people see others is different from how people see themselves: A replicable pattern across cultures
Consensus studies from 4 cultures--in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Germany--as well as secondary analyses of self- and observer-reported Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) data from 29 cultures suggest that there is a cross-culturally replicable pattern of difference between internal and external perspectives for the Big Five personality traits. People see themselves as more neurotic and open to experience compared to how t…
"Personality Profiles and the "Russian Soul: Literary and Scholarly Views Evaluated
Many domestic and foreign observers have claimed that Russians have a unique constellation of personality traits that mirrors their distinctive historical and cultural experience. To examine the hypothesized uniqueness of Russian personality, members of the Russian Character and Personality Survey collected data from 39 samples in 33 administrative areas of the Russian Federation. Respondents ( N = 7,065) identified an ethnically Russian adult or…
Correlates of personality trait levels and their changes in very old age: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1921
On the street where you live: Neighbourhood deprivation and quality of life among community-dwelling older people in Edinburgh, Scotland
Personality Traits and Inflammation in Men and Women in Their Early 70s: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 Study of Healthy Aging
OBJECTIVES: Studies have reported associations between the five-factor model's personality traits and inflammation markers interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP). Findings, however, have been inconsistent. This study investigates these associations in individuals who ranged in age from approximately 70 to 73 years. METHODS: Participants were from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (n = 818). Acute-phase proteins-CRP and fibrinogen-were meas…
Neuroticism and Extraversion in youth predict mental wellbeing and life satisfaction 40 years later
Cross-rater agreement on common and specific variance of personality scales and items
State of the aRt personality research: A tutorial on network analysis of personality data in R
Personality traits below facets: The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances
It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 it…
SNP‐Based Heritability Estimates of Common and Specific Variance in Self‐ and Informant‐Reported Neuroticism Scales
OBJECTIVE: Our study aims to estimate the proportion of the phenotypic variance of Neuroticism and its facet scales that can be attributed to common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two adult populations from Estonia (EGCUT; N = 3,292) and the Netherlands (Lifelines; N = 13,383). METHOD: Genomic-relatedness-matrix restricted maximum likelihood (GREML) using genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) software was employed. To build upon pr…
Markers of Psychological Differences and Social and Health Inequalities: Possible Genetic and Phenotypic Overlaps
Associations between markers of ostensible psychological characteristics and social and health inequalities are pervasive but difficult to explain. In some cases, there may be causal influence flowing from social and health inequalities to psychological differences, whereas sometimes it may be the other way around. Here, we focus on the possibility that some markers that we often consider as indexing different domains of individual differences ma…
Within- and between individual variability of personality characteristics and physical exercise
The Gaussian Graphical Model in Cross-Sectional and Time-Series Data
We discuss the Gaussian graphical model (GGM; an undirected network of partial correlation coefficients) and detail its utility as an exploratory data analysis tool. The GGM shows which variables predict one-another, allows for sparse modeling of covariance structures, and may highlight potential causal relationships between observed variables. We describe the utility in three kinds of psychological data sets: data sets in which consecutive cases…
What Makes Young Russians Happy and Satisfied With Their Lives
Participants ( N = 10,672 with the mean age of 20.7 years) of the Russian Character and Personality Survey (RCPS), involving 40 universities or colleges from across the Russian Federation, rated their happiness and satisfaction with life; the ratings were combined into an index of subjective well-being (SWB). Using the National Character Survey (NCS), participants also rated their own personality characteristics as well as those of an ideal perso…
Source method biases as implicit personality theory at the domain and facet levels
OBJECTIVE: We tested predictions about the structure and magnitude of method biases in single-source personality trait assessments. We expected a large number of distinct biases that would parallel the observed structure of traits, at both facet and item levels. METHOD: We analyzed multimethod ratings on the Estonian NEO Personality Inventory-3 in a sample of 3,214 adults. By subtracting informant ratings from self-reports, we eliminated true sco…
Kids becoming less alike: A behavioral genetic analysis of developmental increases in personality variance from childhood to adolescence
Recent work in personality development has indicated that the magnitude of individual differences in personality increases over child development. Do such patterns reflect the differentiation of individuals by genotype, an increasing influence of environmental factors, or some (interactive) combination of the two? Using a population-based sample of over 2,500 twins and multiples from the Texas Twin Project, we estimated age trends in the variance…
Personality characteristics below facets: A replication and meta-analysis of cross-rater agreement, rank-order stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances
Obesity has limited behavioural overlap with addiction and psychiatric phenotypes
Psychology (46 works) · Social Psychology (38 works) · Personality (33 works) · Big Five personality traits (29 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (29 works) · Developmental psychology (20 works) · Cognitive Abilities and Testing (13 works) · Mathematics (11 works) · Extraversion and introversion (10 works) · Statistics (10 works)