Dr Jana Uher
- Media Contact
- SPN Mentor
My research centres on meta-theoretical, methodological, and methodical foundations for contextualised research on individual behaviour and dyadic social relationships from comparative perspectives spanning both different sociocultural communities in human populations and various species. My special focus lies on comparisons of ethological measurements of individual and dyadic behaviours with investigations of the mental and social representations that humans develop of these behaviours in everyday life.
The enormous diversity across human cultures and even more across species entails three epistemological core issues:
(1) Meta-theoretical concepts of the phenomena to be studied
(2) Methodological approaches to decide which elements of the thus defined phenomena should be studied
(3) Suitable methods of their measurement in the population under study.
My empirical research focuses on humans (adults from different sociocultural communities) and on nonhuman primates (esp. the great apes, capuchins and macaques).
Primary Interests:
- Culture and Ethnicity
- Group Processes
- Interpersonal Processes
- Nonverbal Behavior
- Organizational Behavior
- Person Perception
- Personality, Individual Differences
- Research Methods, Assessment
- Self and Identity
- Sociology, Social Networks
Research Group or Laboratory:
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Video Gallery
How We Judge Others' Personality: Gender, Ethnicity and Questionnaires
Journal Articles:
- Uher, J. (2023b). What are constructs? Ontological nature, epistemological challenges, theoretical foundations and key sources of misunderstandings and confusions. Psychological Inquiry, 34, 280-290. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2023.2274384
- Uher, J. (2023a). What’s wrong with rating scales? Psychology’s replication and confidence crisis cannot be solved without transparency in data generation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(5), e12740. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12740
- Uher, J. (2022b). Rating scales institutionalise a network of logical errors and conceptual problems in research practices: A rigorous analysis showing ways to tackle psychology’s crises. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1009893. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1009893
- Uher, J. (2022a). Functions of units, scales and quantitative data: Fundamental differences in numerical traceability between sciences. Quality & Quantity. International Journal of Methodology, 56, 2519-2548. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-021-01215-6
- Uher, J. (2021d). Problematic research practices in psychology: Misconceptions about data collection entail serious fallacies in data analyses. Theory & Psychology, 31, 411-416. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543211014963
- Uher, J. (2021c). Psychology’s status as a science: Peculiarities and intrinsic challenges. Moving beyond its current deadlock towards conceptual integration. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 55, 212-224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09545-0
- Uher, J. (2021b). Quantitative psychology under scrutiny: Measurement requires not result-dependent but traceable data generation. Personality and Individual Differences, 170, 110205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110205
- Uher, J. (2021a). Psychometrics is not measurement: Unraveling a fundamental misconception in quantitative psychology and the complex network of its underlying fallacies [Target article]. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 41, 58-84. https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000176
- Uher, J. (2020b). Measurement in metrology, psychology and social sciences: Data generation traceability and numerical traceability as basic methodological principles applicable across sciences. Quality & Quantity. International Journal of Methodology, 54, 975-1004. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-020-00970-2
- Uher, J. (2020a). Human uniqueness explored from the uniquely human perspective: Epistemological and methodological challenges. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 50, 20-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12232
- Uher, J. (2019). Data generation methods across the empirical sciences: Differences in the study phenomena's accessibility and the processes of data encoding. Quality & Quantity. International Journal of Methodology, 53, 221-246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-018-0744-3
- Uher, J. (2018c). The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals: Foundations for the science of personality and individual differences. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds). The SAGE handbook of personality and individual differences. Vol. 1. The science of personality and individual differences. Part 1: Theoretical perspectives on personality and individual differences (Chapter 4, pp. 84-109). London, UK: Sage.
- Uher, J. (2018b). Quantitative data from rating scales: An epistemological and methodological enquiry. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2599, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02599
- Uher, J. (2018a). Taxonomic models of individual differences: A guide to transdisciplinary approaches. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373 (1744). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017-0171
- Uher, J. (2016b). Exploring the workings of the psyche: Metatheoretical and methodological foundation. In J. Valsiner, G. Marsico, N. Chaudhary, T. Sato, and V. Dazzani (Eds.). Psychology as the science of human being: the Yokohama Manifesto. Annals of Theoretical Psychology, Vol 13 (pp. 299-324). Cham, Springer International. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21094-0_18
- Uher, J. (2016a). What is behaviour? And (when) is language behaviour? Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 46, 475-501. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12104
- Uher, J. (2015d). Agency enabled by the Psyche: Explorations using the Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals. Annals of Theoretical Psychology, 12, 177-228. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-10130-9_13
- Uher, J. (2015c). Interpreting "personality" taxonomies: Why previous models cannot capture individual-specific experiencing, behaviour, functioning and development. Major taxonomic tasks still lay ahead. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 49. DOI: 10.1007/s12124-014-9281-3
- Uher, J. (2015b). Developing "personality" taxonomies: Metatheoretical and methodological rationales underlying selection approaches, methods of data generation and reduction principles. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 49. DOI: 10.1007/s12124-014-9280-4
- Uher, J. (2015a). Conceiving "personality": Psychologists’ challenges and basic fundamentals of the Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 49, 398-458. DOI: 10.1007/s12124-014-9283-1
- Uher, J. (2013). Personality psychology: Lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts reveal only half of the story -- Why it is time for a paradigm shift. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 47, 1-55.
- Uher, J. (2011a). Individual behavioral phenotypes: An integrative meta-theoretical framework: Why "behavioral syndromes" are not analogs of "personality." Developmental Psychobiology, 53, 521-548.
- Uher, J. (2008b). Three methodological core issues of comparative personality research. European Journal of Personality, 22, 475-496.
- Uher, J. (2008a). Comparative personality research: Methodological approaches. European Journal of Personality, 22, 427-455.
- Uher, J., Tofimova, I., Sulis, W., Netter, P., Pessoa, L., Posner, M. I., Rothbart, M. K., Rusalov, V., Petersen, I. T., & Schmidt, L. A. (2018). Diversity in action: Exchange of perspectives and reflections on taxonomies of individual differences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373 (1744). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0172
Dr Jana Uher
School of Human Sciences
University of Greenwich
Old Royal Naval College, Park Row
London SE10 9LS
United Kingdom