Department webpage

Jason bounced around the United States, from Louisiana to Texas to New York to Massachusetts, and somehow landed in England, where he is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. His research concerns person-environment interactions and focuses on the ways in which personality is expressed in everything from people's preferences for music to the places in which they live. His work on these topics has appeared in several of the most prestigious journals in psychology-including American Psychologist, Journal of Personality, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Perspectives on Psychological Science, and Psychological Science. He is committed to sharing psychological research with the public and does so by giving open lectures and designing online interactive psychology surveys, most recently the BBC's Big Personality Test.

Teaching

Jason teaches introduction to social psychology (Part 1), current topics in social psychology (Part 2), and research methods (MPhil). 

Research interests

Personality, culture, music, geography

Selected recent publications

Rentfrow, P. J. (in press). The open city. In A. E. Andersson, D. Andersson, and C. Mellander (Eds.). Handbook of Cities and Creativity. London: Elgar.

Rentfrow, P. J. (2010). Statewide differences in personality: Toward a psychological geography of the United States. American Psychologist, 65, 548-558.

Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., & Levitin, D.J. (in press). The Structure of Musical Preferences: A Five-Factor Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., & Zilca, R. (2011). Listening, watching, and reading: The structure and correlates of entertainment preferences. Journal of Personality, 79, 223-257. 

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D. & Potter, J. (2008). A Theory of the emergence, persistence, and expression of regional variation in basic traits. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 339-369.