Peter J. Rentfrow
Peter Jason Rentfrow is professor of personality and individual differences in the Psychology Department at Cambridge University, where he directs the Social Dynamics Research Center. He is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Alan Turing Institute. Biography. Rentfrow was born in Louisiana and later moved to Texas, where he graduated from Kingwood High School. He studied psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his BA in 1998 and PhD in 2004 under the supervision of Samuel D. Gosling, William B. Swann , and James W. Pennebaker. Rentfrow joined the faculty of the Psychology Department at Cambridge University in 2005. Research. Rentfrow's research interests include geographical psychology, music psychology, and psychological assessment. His research seeks to understand the ways in which personality traits interact with the environment and become expressed in everyday life. Geographical psychology. Rentfrow's research in geographical psychology demonstrates that social influence, ecological influence, and selective migration are key mechanisms that contribute to the spatial clustering of psychological characteristics. Personal tastes and preferences. His work in this area seeks to understand the degree to which personal preferences reflect and  effectively communicate information about people’s psychological characteristics. Psychological and behavioral assessment. In collaboration with Samuel D. Gosling, he developed the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, a brief measure of the Big Five personality traits. Also with Gosling, he developed the Short Test of Musical Preferences, an individual difference measure designed to assess musical preferences. With Lewis R. Goldberg and Daniel J. Levitin, he developed an audio-based measure of musical preferences in which respondents report their effective reactions to excerpts of various pieces of music. In addition to traditional self-report measures, Rentfrow has collaborated with computer scientist Cecilia Mascolo  to develop a mobile sensing platform for measuring behavior and psychological states unobtrusively. Honours. Rentfrow is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Alan Turing Institute. He edited "Geographical Psychology", which reviews the state of the science on the ways in which psychological traits vary across geographic regions. With Daniel J. Levitin, he co-edited "Foundations in Music Psychology", which reviews the state of the science on the neurological, cognitive, and social psychological bases of musical experiences. Rentfrow has served as a member of the senior editorial team for  five psychology journals, including "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin" and "Social Psychological and Personality Science."