Welcome!

My name is James LeBreton. I am a Professor of Psychology and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University. I am also the director of the Measurement, Applied Psychology, & Statistics (MAPS) lab. 

For the last 20 years, I have focused on developing, testing, and revising the Conditional Reasoning Theory of Personality. This theory is anchored on the basic concept of motivated (biased) reasoning. Specifically, we believe that individuals with strong motives (e.g., motive to aggress; motive to achieve; motive for power) develop cognitive biases (e.g., hostile attribution bias; efficacy of persistence bias; social hierarchy bias) that help to justify the pursuit of behaviors that satisfy their underlying motives (e.g., harming others; working long hours to open a new business; pursuing positions of leadership). As part of this research program, we have developed several new measures that assess the motives to aggress, to achieve, and for power. Using these new measures, we have tested hypotheses linking personality to organizational outcomes including counterproductive work behavior, leadership, team processes & performance, and job attitudes.

In addition, I have interests related to measurement and statistics. Specifically, my work has addressed issues related to: 1) meta-analysis, 2) relative importance analysis, 3) multilevel measurement, 4) multilevel analysis, 5) moderated multiple regression, and 5) test development & validation. Finally, I am a former editor of Organizational Research Methods (2014-2017) and recently co-edited the APA Handbook on Multilevel Theory, Measurement, and Analysis (2019).