Mike Furr

I am generally interested in personality, psychological assessment, and moral psychology.

Within those general themes, I have been focusing recently on two main topics in my work with students – honesty and patience.

1)    Honesty

• Why are people honest in some situations but not others?
• Why are some people more honest than other people?
• To what degree do people truly value honesty (particularly in comparison to other ostensible virtues)?
• How can honesty be measured?
• Other questions!
• I’ve been collaborating with Dr. Eranda Jayawickreme and Dr. Will Fleeson (both WFU Psychology) on this work

2)    Patience (a more recent interest)

• What is patience as a state, trait, and virtue? Are there different types or components of patience?
• What do people think patience is?
• How useful/adaptive is patience?
• Why are people patient in some situations but not others?
• Why are some people generally more patient than other people? Is it even true that there are personality differences in patience? That is, is it even true that “some people are generally more patient that other people”
• How can patience be measured?
• Other questions!
• I’ve been collaborating with Dr. Christian Miller (WFU Philosophy) and Dr. Christian Waugh (WFU Psychology) on this work

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Recent Representative Publications

Books

Furr, R. M. (2022). Psychometrics: An Introduction (4th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Miller, C., Furr, R. M., Knobel, A., & Fleeson, W. (Eds.). (2015). Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology. Oxford University Press. New York, NY.

Furr, R. M. (2011). Scale Construction and Psychometrics for Social and Personality Psychology. London, UK: Sage Publications. (Part of the SAGE Library in Social and Personality Psychology Methods).

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Furr, R. M., Prentice, M. Hawkins Parham, A., & Jayawickreme, E. (2022). Development and validation of the Moral Character Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 98, 104228.

Furr, R. M. (2021). Variability and consistency in the analysis of behavior. In J. Rauthmann (Ed.), Handbook of Personality Dynamics and Processes. (pp. 733-761). Elsevier.

Furr, R. M., & Funder, D. C. (2021). Persons, situations, and person-situation interactions. In O. P. John & R. W. Robins (Eds.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (4^th Edition) (pp. 667-685).Guilford Press

Rakhshani, A., & Furr, R. M. (2021). A prospective longitudinal study of the reciprocal effects of personality and adversity. Journal of Personality, 89, 50-67.

Furr, R. M. (2020). Psychometrics in clinical psychological research. In A. G. C. Wright & M. N. Hallquist (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology (pp. 54-65). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Collier-Spruel, L. A., Hawkins, A. A., Jayawickreme, E., Fleeson, W., & Furr, R. M. (2019). Relativism or Tolerance? Defining, Assessing, Connecting, and Distinguishing Two Moral Personality Features with Prominent Roles in Modern Societies. Journal of Personality, 87, 1170-1188.

Furr, R. M., & Heuckeroth, S. A. (2019). The “Quantifying Construct Validity” procedure: Its role, value, interpretations, and computation. Assessment, 26, 555-566

Helzer, E. G., Jayawickreme, E., & Furr, R. M. (2018). Moral character: Current insights and future directions. In T. Shackelford & V. Ziegler-Hill (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences Vol. 2 (pp. 278-300). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 

Hartley, A. G., & Furr, R. M. (2017). A profile-based framework for factorial similarity and the congruence coefficient. Journal of Personality Assessment, 99, 653-663.

Note: This paper won the Society of Personality Assessment’s Walter G. Klopfer Award for the best empirical paper published in the Journal of Personality Assessment in 2017.

Hartley, A. G., Furr, R. M., Helzer, E., Jayawickreme, E., Velasquez, K., & Fleeson, W. (2016). Morality’s centrality in liking, respecting, and understanding others. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 648-657

Wood, D., & Furr, R. M. (2016). The correlates of similarity estimates are often misleadingly positive: The nature and scope of the problem, and some solutions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20, 79-99.

Law, M. K., Furr, R. M., Arnold, E. M., Mneimne, M., Jaquett, C., & Fleeson, W. (2015). Does asking frequently and repeatedly about suicide cause harm? A randomized control study. Psychological Assessment, 27, 1171-1181.

Helzer, E. G., Furr, R. M., Hawkins, A., Barranti, M., Blackie, L. E. R., & Fleeson, W. (2014). Agreement on the perception of moral character. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 1698-1710