DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

Research Interests

Jennifer Tackett is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. She is the outgoing editor-in-chief at Clinical Psychological Science, has served as an associate editor at eleven other academic journals, and is affiliated faculty at the Institute for Policy Research, the Northwestern student incubator The Garage, and the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the McCormick School of Engineering. She is principal investigator of the Personality Across Development lab at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on identifying and measuring early personality characteristics related to how youth learn to get along, get ahead, and keep it under control. She works from a broad perspective that identifies personality traits as potentially both adaptive and maladaptive and is interested in harnessing early personality to facilitate leadership development in youth and early adulthood. 

Current Research Topics

Leadership Emergence and Development

Tackett, J. L., Reardon, K. W., Fast, N. J., Johnson, L., Kang, S. K., Lang, J. W., & Oswald, F. L. (2023). Understanding the leaders of tomorrow: The need to study leadership in adolescence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(4), 829-842.

Bates, C. M., Chen-Bendle, E. C., Wolniak, G. C., Johnson, L. U., & Tackett, J. L. (2025). Investigating leadership aspirations, race and ethnicity among resilient US college students. Journal of Leadership Education.

Wolniak, G. C., Chen-Bendle, E. C., & Tackett, J. L. (2023). Exploring gender differences in leadership aspirations: A four-year longitudinal study of college students from adverse backgrounds. AERA Open, 9, 23328584231183665.

Entrepreneurship

Tackett, J. L., Sherman, R., & Kaufman, M. (2025). Defining the Personality of the Successful Entrepreneur. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 09713557251362320.

Tackett, J. L., Reardon, K. W., Kaufman, M., & Sherman, R. A. (2022). If an entrepreneur founded the DSM–5 alternative model of personality disorder: When Axis II meets disruptive innovation: Comment on Widiger and Hines (2022).

Personality Measurement and Development

Ringwald, W. R., Shields, A. N., Kushner, S. C., Herzhoff, K., & Tackett, J. L. (2024). Cross-situational variability in childhood personality states. Journal of personality and social psychology, 126(5), 913.

Brandes, C. M., Kushner, S. C., Herzhoff, K., & Tackett, J. L. (2021). Facet-level personality development in the transition to adolescence: Maturity, disruption, and gender differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(5), 1095.

Youth Personality and Psychopathology

Katz, B. A., Shields, A. N., Watts, A. L., Wu, C., & Tackett, J. L. (2024). Temperament, Personality, and Psychopathology in Youth: A Preregistered Multilevel Meta-Analysis and Preregistered Large-Scale Replication and Extension.

España, R. A., Brandes, C. M., Shields, A. N., Bates, C. M., Smack, A. J., & Tackett, J. L. (2024). Personal values and psychopathology in a diverse youth sample. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 46(2), 457-472.

Shields, A., Reardon, K., Lawler, T., & Tackett, J. (2024). Affective contributions to instrumental and reactive aggression in middle childhood: Variable-and person-centered approaches. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 53(2), 169-183.

Improving Psychological Science

Bottesini, J., Chambers, C., Howard, A., Lucas, R., Moore, D., Sbarra, D., … & Syed, M. (2025). Peer Community in Psychology: A platform for peer review of preprints across psychology.

Howard, A. L., Neal, T. M., Kirtley, O. J., Urry, H. L., & Tackett, J. L. (2025). Open science at Clinical Psychological Science: Reflections on progress, lessons learned, and suggestions for continued improvement. Clinical Psychological Science, 13(1), 195-204.

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