People’s personalities change over time, and those changes can impact every aspect of their lives, from success at work to relationships with family and friends. Richard Robins, Distinguished Professor of psychology at UC Davis, has studied these changes for his entire career.
The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) has honored Robins with the 2025 Block Award for research accomplishments across his career. SPSP is the world’s largest association of social and personality psychologists.
“This is a great honor for the work I’ve done examining how people develop and change across the lifespan and how that impacts various outcomes as they go through life,” said Robins.
Leading the Personality, Self, and Emotion Lab at UC Davis, Robins is best known in the field of psychology for conducting large, longitudinal studies of child and adult development. These include the California Families Project, which has for 20 years now followed the same 674 families who have their origins in Mexico.
He also studies how different personality traits, like conscientiousness or neuroticism, and psychological facets, like self-esteem or narcissism, develop over time. In a recent review paper covering hundreds of longitudinal studies, Robins and co-author Ulrich Orth at the University of Bern show high self-esteem benefits people’s relationships, performance in school and at work, mental and physical health and other aspects of their lives.
Inspired by mentors and paying it back
Robins earned his Ph.D. in psychology at UC Berkeley, where his advisors and mentors included Jack Block, the namesake for this SPSP career award. Block’s book Lives Through Time (Routledge, 1983) emphasized the importance of studying people’s lives across different periods instead of at just one moment.
“Berkeley at the time was the center of longitudinal studies of personality and development more generally,” said Robins. “I really adopted the perspective that we need to study people as they go through life to truly understand them. You can't just take a snapshot of a person and get the whole picture.”
Robins is also known in his field for having dedicated himself to training and mentoring young scholars. Many of his former graduate students have gone on to successful careers. These include Olivia Atherton, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Riverside who was honored this year with a SPSP SAGE Early Career Trajectory Award. Atherton is also a collaborator on the California Families Project, which she worked on for five years while completing her Ph.D.
Among his many other former graduate students are Joanne Chung, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga; Jessica Tracy, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia; and Kali Trzesniewski, a professor in cooperative extension in the UC Davis Department of Human Ecology and executive officer of the Association for Research in Personality.
“I think UC Davis excels at creating a really positive environment for students, definitely in the Department of Psychology,” said Robins. “We try to make them all feel like they're in it together, and then they all succeed together.”
Additional honors in 2025 for UC Davis faculty and alumni in personality psychology include:
SPSP SAGE Early Career Trajectory Award
- Emorie Beck, UC Davis Assistant Professor of Psychology
- Olivia Atherton, UC Riverside Assistant Professor of Psychology and UC Davis Ph.D. alumna
- Ted Schwaba, Michigan State University Assistant Professor of Psychology and UC Davis Ph.D. alumnus
- Katherine Lawson, Rhodes College Assistant Professor of Psychology and UC Davis Ph.D. alumna
SPSP Student Publication Prize
- Winkie Ma, UC Davis Ph.D. candidate in psychology for "Stability and Change in Narcissism from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Mexican-Origin Youth”
SPSP Award for Distinguished Service to the Society
The Equity and Antiracism Task Force and Its Descendants, which includes:
- Alison Ledgerwood, UC Davis Professor of Psychology
- Andrew Todd, UC Davis Associate Professor of Psychology
- Dulce Westberg, UC Davis Assistant Professor of Psychology
European Association of Personality Psychology Early Achievement Award
- Emorie Beck, UC Davis Assistant Professor of Psychology
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