People attending conference.

Cultivating Human Capital

The Spencer Conference Series on Individual Differences and Economic Behavior

In this second conference in the series, participants discussed the role of life experience in the development of personality and human capital. The meeting was a series of informal, roundtable discussions with some participants selected to feature their work in an effort to foster productive general discussion and lay a foundation for interdisciplinary dialogue. The participants focused on these guiding questions:

  1. How do differences in parenting, schooling, and stressful life events interact to influence life trajectories?
  2. What do targeted interventions reveal about the causal role played by specific aspects of experience?

Program & Resources

December 4, 2009

Opening Remarks

Speakers
James J. Heckman
University of Chicago

Brent Roberts
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Angela Duckworth
University of Pennsylvania

Session 1: Stressful and Enriching Environments

Speakers
Taxonomies of Life Histories
Burton Singer
Princeton University

Social Advantage and Disadvantage in the Formation of Human Capital
Rand Conger
University of California, Davis

Session 2: Parenting

Speakers
Differential Susceptibility to Environmental Influences
Jay Belsky
Birkbeck College and University of London

Parenting Strategies, Family Resources, and Child Characteristics
Shelly Lundberg
University of Washington

Proximity and Co-residence of Adult Children to Their Parents: Description and Correlates
Robert Pollak
Washington University at St. Louis

The Roles of Parenting and Children's Genetics in Social Development
Ariel Knafo
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Session 3: Interventions

Speakers
What the Fast Track Randomized Controlled Trial Tells Us about Risk for Conduct Disorder
Kenneth Dodge
Duke University

What Addiction Reveals about the Challenges and Possibilities for Individual Change
Gene Heyman
Boston College

The Role of Cognitive and Social Skills in Explaining the Effect of the HighScope Perry Preschool Program
James J. Heckman
University of Chicago

The HighScope Early Childhood Education Model and its Effects
Larry Schweinhart
High/Scope Educational Research Foundation

Hypothesized Mechanisms in Altering Life Trajectories through Early Intervention
Sharon Ramey
Georgetown University

December 5, 2009

Session 4: Tools of the Mind

Roundtable Initiators
Elena Bodrova
McREL

Deborah Leong
Metro State College at Denver

Adele Diamond
University of British Columbia

Session 5: Capstone Summary and Synthesis: Designing Optimal Intervenetions

Moderators
James J. Heckman
University of Chicago

Brent Roberts
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Angela Duckworth
University of Pennsylvania
Speakers
Lex Borghans
Maastricht University

Bart Golsteyn
Maastricht University

Carmit Segal
Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Ulrich Trautwein
Max Planck Group, University of Tubingen

Reading List

  • Borghans, Lex, Angela Lee Duckworth, James J. Heckman, and Bas ter Weel. (2008). "The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits." Journal of Human Resources, 43(4):972-1059.
  • Diener, Ed, Daniel Kahneman, William Tov, and Raksha Arora. (2010). "Income’s Association with Judgments of Life Versus Feelings." In International Differences in Well-Being, edited by Ed Diener, Daniel Kahneman and John Helliwell. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  • Diener, Ed, and Martin E.P. Seligman. (2004). "Beyond Money:Toward an Economy of Well-Being." Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(1):1-31.
  • Farah, Martha J. (2010). "Mind, Brain, and Education in Socioeconomic Context." In The Developmental Relations among Mind, Brain and Education: Essays in Honor of Robbie Case, edited by Michel Ferrari and Ljiljana Vuletic, 243-256. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
  • Fehr, Ernst. (2009). "On the Economics and Biology of Trust." Journal of the European Economic Association, 7(2-3):235-266.
  • Fehr, Ernst, and Armin Falk. (2002). "Psychological foundations of incentives." European Economic Review, 46(4):687-724.
  • Fehr, Ernst, and Urs Fischbacher. (2002). "Why Social Preferences Matter – The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives." The Economic Journal, 112(478):C1-C33.
  • Fraley, R. C., and B. W. Roberts. (2005). "Patterns of continuity: a dynamic model for conceptualizing the stability of individual differences in psychological constructs across the life course." Psychological Review, 112(1):60-74.
  • Hackman, Daniel A., and Martha J. Farah. (2009). "Socioeconomic status and the developing brain." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(2):65-73.
  • Roberts, B. W., and W. F. DelVecchio. (2000). "The rank-order consistency of personality traits from childhood to old age: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies." Psychological Bulletin, 126(1):3-25.
  • Roberts, Brent W., Nathan R. Kuncel, Rebecca Shiner, Avshalom Caspi, and Lewis R. Goldberg. (2007). "The Power of Personality: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important Life Outcomes." Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4):313-345.
  • Roberts, B. W., and E. M. Pomerantz. (2004). "On traits, situations, and their integration: a developmental perspective." Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4):402-16.
  • Tsukayama, Eli, Angela Lee Duckworth, and Betty Kim. (2012). "Resisting Everything except Temptation: Evidence and an Explanation for Domain–specific Impulsivity." European Journal of Personality, 26(3):318-334.