Doris Schuster

Contact

Category: International Intern 2014

Email: schuster@psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de

About

I studied psychology at the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) and I finished my study in 2012. Since 2012 I have been writing my PhD at the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany). My supervisor is Prof. Dr. Joachim Vogt.

In 2014, I lived in New Zealand for three months. This time was very important for me, especially for my research career. I have never been so far away from home for such a long time and it was very interesting to get to know new people, and talk and discuss with people from different places over the world.

During the internship program I worked with Paul Jose. I learnt many things about statistical methods, especially about moderation and mediation. During this time I organized a translation and back-translation of a lengthy survey, which included measures of personality and happiness (English -> German; German -> English), and I also analyzed a large pre-existing dataset to obtain new research results about happiness. We investigated the prediction of subjective happiness by three orientations to happiness (i.e., meaning, pleasure, and engagement). We found a curvilinear relationship between two orientations and happiness, which suggests that high levels of engagement do not lead to greater happiness, whereas high levels of meaning do lead to greater happiness. This paper proposal has been accepted, so next year Paul and I will present these results at the International Convention of Psychological Science under the auspices of the Association for Psychological Science at Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

At the moment I am recruiting participants for the German version of the translated personality and happiness survey. This data collection is a part of a cross-national study, so we will eventually compare different countries on levels of happiness and associated constructs.

Areas of interest

Leadership; Personnel management; Health management; Anger; Stress; Coping; Burnout; Social psychology; Happiness