The department deals with a number of topics in the field of personality and psychological assessment. This includes aspects of the structure of personality, the recording of personality traits, neuronal correlates of personality, personality development, and the significance of personality for behavior and action outcomes, for example in a school or professional context.

Studies with a focus on diagnostics are dealing, for example, with the development of a test procedure to capture the two-dimensional Theoretical Intellect Framework; the development of a job-related curiosity test according to the frame-of-reference approach; the development of a test procedure to capture greed; the use of Situational Judgment Tests to record personality, and the investigation of intelligence through short tests.

The DFG project "Development of the personality trait intellect during the transition from school to work" focusses on the investigation of personality development in emerging adults. In a longitudinal study, the developmental trajectories of adolescents in a critical phase - the transition from school to work - are to be examined. Besides normative changes, influencing factors as well as moderators of the development that improve our understanding of differential lines of development in this construct are investigated.

In studies with a neuroscientific focus, paradigms and methods from cognitive neuropsychology are used, especially EEG, to investigate the neuronal basis of personality.