Research Interests and Publications:

Dr. Saucier leads a research group, often involved in international collaborations, that focuses on the following research questions:

* What is the most cross-culturally generalizable structure of personality attributes? What is the best (especially, the most valid) way to measure this structure? How do the dimensions in this structure relate to the mindset or affective-motivational ‘personality system’ of the individual? What are the sources of personality change (including sources related to beliefs and values)?

* What is the most cross-culturally generalizable structure for inter-individual variation in belief and value systems? What kinds of beliefs and values have the largest effects on patterns of behavior and emotion, and are the most integral components of culture? Which patterns of beliefs and values are associated with optimal human development, and which patterns encourage psychosocial dysfunction (e.g., alienation, corruption, militant extremism, genocide)?

The approach is “top-down” in the sense that we begin by defining the most important dimensions of dispositional variation and then seek to identify mechanisms that most importantly account for that variation. Dr. Saucier has been a leader in developing and refining dimensional models for personality (the Big Five, and upgrading from the Big Five to a more comprehensive Big Six model) and beliefs and values (dimensions of ‘isms’).

Selected Publications:

Saucier, G. (1997). Effects of variable selection on the factor structure of person descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1296-1312.

Saucier, G. (2000). Isms and the structure of social attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 366-385.

Saucier, G. (2003). Factor structure of English-language personality type-nouns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 695-708.

Saucier, G., Georgiades, S., Tsaousis, I., & Goldberg, L. R. (2005). The factor structure of Greek personality adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 856-875.

Saucier, G., & Skrzypinska, K. (2006). Spiritual but not religious? Evidence for two independent dispositions. Journal of Personality, 74¸ 1257-1292.

Saucier, G., Akers, L. G., Shen-Miller, S., Knezevic, G., & Stankov, L. (2009). Patterns of thinking in militant extremism. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 256-271.

Saucier, G. (in press). Recurrent personality dimensions in inclusive lexical studies: Indications for a Big Six structure. Journal of Personality.

For additional publications, see

http://www.uoregon.edu/~gsaucier/gsau3.htm