Welcome to the lab of Prof. Dr. Mitja Back. My associates, students and I are interested in the interplay of personality and social relationships.
Our research focuses on how personality affects the initiation and maintenance of social relationships and how, in turn, social relationships feed back into the development of social identities. We are also developing methods to capture and analyze personality and social relationship dynamics.
Latest projects, cover topics such as self-enhancement, the popularity, self-esteem and affective states of narcissists, the conceptualization, assessment, and development of social skills, the determinants and accuracy of interpersonal judgments, social interactions and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, personality and speed-dating, personality and the development of friendships and social status, behavioral, affective, and cognitive state variability, methodological developments for testing discrepancy hypotheses (e.g., response surface analysis), the development of extraversion and self-esteem in social context, as well as perceived societal marginalization, conspiracy mentality and threat towards refugees.
In teaching, we provide a comprehensive B.Sc.- and M.Sc.-program in personality psychology and psychological assessment, including lectures and courses on psychodiagnostics, test theory, differential psychology, performance, ability and personality tests, test construction, and psychological examination.
Our lab is actively respresented in two centers at the University of Münster. For further information see Münster Center for Open Science (MüCoS) and Center for Social Skills (CeSoS).