ABSTRACT
When asked to write a chapter on measuring personality and other individual differences in the context of groups research, I immediately said “yes” because I have been doing it for 20 years since I was in graduate school at Berkeley (see Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry, 1993). Then I recalled all of the problems, questions, difficulties, and challenges in publishing individual difference papers that cross the strong party line in our profession between individual and group levels of analysis and thought that perhaps I had agreed too quickly. However, I have also always believed that real progress is made by those who focus on interesting problems, regardless of, and in many cases especially because they focus on those problems that cross artificial professional boundaries. So, if I can help and encourage more researchers to span the divide and address the very important problems of how individuals interact to create group-level phenomenon, it will have been worth the time to write this chapter. In doing so, I have tried to outline my thinking through a series of questions that someone new to the profession might have. First, why are these questions of individual differences in the study of groups interesting? Second, what are the challenges of studying individual differences in groups? Third, how do I work through some of those challenges and the specific problems of publishing group-level papers with individual difference measures?
