Position Title
Assistant Professor
Education
- PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 2020
- MA, Washington University in St. Louis, 2019
- BA, Brown University, 2016
About
Dr. Beck is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department specializing in personality psychology. She received her PhD in Social and Personality Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2020 and her BA (with honors) from Brown University in 2016. She completed postdoctoral training at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine from 2020-2022.
Dr. Beck is currently recruiting undergraduate students to join the lab at this time for the 2025-2026 academic year. She is not currently accepting graduate applicants.
Research Focus
Dr. Beck's research focuses around the question of what personality is. Definitions have big consequences for how we measure personality, what those measures predict both short- and long-term, how personality is thought to change, and more. One way of doing this is to focus on different levels of aggregation. Thus, she studies how to understand the personality of an individual relative to only themself, relative to some others, and relative to all others. To do so, she uses a mix of methods, including experience sampling methods, passive sensing, survey data, panel data, cognitive tests, and more measured across time intervals from moments to years along with an array of statistical approaches, including time series analysis, multilevel / hierarchical modeling, machine learning, network psychometrics, structural equation modeling, and more. For example, Dr. Beck has been working to build personalized machine learning prediction of behaviors, experiences, and more, finding that we can predict behaviors and experiences better when we don't assume that people have the same antecedents of the behaviors and experiences. Instead, people have unique antecedents, which could have consequences for how to change or intervene upon behaviors and experiences. In other work, Dr. Beck uses longitudinal panel data across multiple continents to answer questions about what personality traits predict over time. For example, she recently examined personality trait and well-being predictors of later dementia diagnoses and neuropathology measures after death, finding that personality traits are strong predictors of dementia diagnosis but have a much more complex relationship with neuropathology measures.
Publications
Beck, E. D., Cheung, F., Thapa, S., and Jackson, J. J. (in press). A network approach to top down and bottom life satisfaction. Nature Human Behavior. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3074181/v1
Nissen, A. T., & Beck, E. D. (2025). Linking person-specific network parameters to between-person trait change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/pvubn_v1
Beck, E. D. and Jackson, J. J. (2020a). Idiographic traits: A return to Allportian approaches to personality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3):301-308. https://psyarxiv.com/r8xfh/download
Beck, E. D. and Jackson, J. J. (2020b). Consistency and change in idiographic personality: A longitudinal ESM network study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(5):1080-1100. https://psyarxiv.com/pb92q/download
Teaching
During the 2024/25 academic year, Dr. Beck is teaching Data Visualization in R (graduate-level; PSC 203B), Current Directions in Personality (upper-div undergraduate; PSC 190), Introduction to Personality (undergraduate-level; PSC 162). During prior academic years, Dr. Beck taught has Data Management and Cleaning in R (graduate-level), Data Visualization in R (graduate-level), and Personality (undergraduate-level).
Awards
Early Achievement Award, European Association of Personality Psychology, 2025
Hellman Fellow, Society of Hellman's Fellows, 2024
Walter Klopfer Award for Best Paper, Journal of Personality Assessment, Society of Personality Assessment, 2023
Emerging Scholar Award, Association for Research in Personality, 2021