Publications

Rau, R., Kueppers, S., Back, M. D., & Grosz, M. P. (2026). Item features affect how well people can predict self-reported personality traces of strangers. European Journal of Personality (accepted for publication)..

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Remmers, C., Anoschin, A., Zimmermann, J., Grosz, M. P., Back, M. D., & Rau, R. (2026). Intuitive judgments of strangers are more popular but not more accurate than deliberate ones. Social Psychological and Personality Science (accepted for publication).

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Rau, R.*, Hönig, L.*, Back, M. D., & Grosz, M. P. (2026). Receiving applause "from the right": Punishing freeriders is socially rewarded by those high in right-wing authoritarianism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (accepted for publication). *shared first authorship.

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Rau, R., Weiner, L., & Vogel, L. (2026). Perceiver positivity differences originate in early-stage impression formation: Evidence from a recognition task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

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Schoedel, R., Altgassen, E., Back, M. D., Buss, M., Bühner, M., Etzel, J. M., Goecke, B., Grinschgl, S., Grunenberg, E., Hätscher, O., Hommel, B. E., Kordsmeyer, T. L., Körner, S., Kuper, N., Mata, R., Mussel, P., Petrasch, A., Rammstedt, B., Rau, R., Short, C. A., Sindermann, C., Stachl, C., Stasielowicz, L., Sust, L., Thelen, J., Weiss, S., Wilhelm, O., Wulff, D., Wrzus, C., & Ziegler, M. (2026). Künstliche Intelligenz und Individuelle Unterschiede. Eine Perspektive der Fachgruppe Differentielle Psychologie, Persönlichkeitspsychologie und Psychologische Diagnostik. Psychologische Rundschau, 77(3), 149–155 [english version retrievable from https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/j8szh_v2].

Preprint

Thielmann, I., Back, M. D., Bleidorn, W., Bukowski, H., Carlson, E. N., Dufner, M., Hofer, G., Hofmann, W., Hopwood, C. J., Human, L. J., Jordan, C. H., Langdon, J., Krueger, J. I., Rau, R., Smillie, L. D., Strohminger, N., Sun, J., Vazire, S., Burghardt, M., …Seidl, A. (2026). A consensus statement on self-knowledge conceptualization, measurement, outcomes, and changeability. Nature Reviews Psychology, 5, 338–351.

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Bleckmann, E., Rau, R., Lüdtke, O., Krause, S., & Wagner, J. (2025). How group personality composition affects person and group outcomes: An integrative analysis using the Group-Actor-Partner-Interdependence Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (accepted for publication).

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Dufner, M.*, Grapsas, S.*, & Rau, R. (2025). Behavioral and valuation contingency: Why the same dispositions lead to different social evaluations across contexts. Social Psychocological and Personality Science, 19485506251356006 *shared first authorship.

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Rau, R.*, Schömann, L. M.*, & Grosz, M. P. (2025). People “fake-good” on personality self-reports more strongly in a job context than in a dating context. Journal of Research in Personality, 116, 104596. *shared first authorship.

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Rau, R., Grosz, M. P., & Back, M. D. (2025). A large-scale, gamified online assessment of first impressions: The Who Knows project. Behavior Research Methods, 57 (3), 83.

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Scharbert, J., Utesch, K., Reiter, T., ter Horst, J., van Zalk, M., Back, M. D., & Rau, R. (2025). If you were happy and you know it, clap your hands! Testing the peak-end rule for retrospective judgments of well-being in everyday life. European Journal of Personality, 39 (1), 55–69.

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Schäpermeier, M. T., Thielmann, I., & Rau, R. (2024). Which measures of beliefs about others’ prosociality predict prosocial behavior in economic games?. Collabra: Psychology, 10(1), Article 121385.

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Kueppers, S., Rau, R., & Scharf, S. (2024). Using Monte Carlo Simulation to forecast the scientific utility of psychological app studies: A tutorial. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 1–15.

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Carlson, E. N., Elsaadawy, N., Pringle, V., & Rau, R. (2024). Individual differences in dissimilation: Do some people make more distinctions among targets’ personalities than others?. Journal of Personality, 92(5), 1341–1355.

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Bleckmann, E., Rau, R., Carlson, E. N., & Wagner, J. (2024). I think you might like me: Emergence and change of meta-liking in initial social interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 127(4), 901–-919.

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Pringle, V., Carlson, E. N., & Rau, R. (2023). Self-knowledge of perceiver effects: Do people know how positively they tend to view targets relative to other people?. Journal of Research in Personality, 106, 104413.

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Schauf, T., Dufner, M., Nestler, S., & Rau, R. (2023). Do agency and communion explain the relationship between perceiver and target effects in interpersonal perception? A meta-analysis on generalized reciprocity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(10), 1479–1494.

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Thielmann, I.*, Rau, R.*, & Locke, K. D. (2023). Trait-specificity versus global positivity: A critical test of alternative sources of assumed similarity in personality judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(4), 828–847. *shared first authorship.

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Rau, R., Zimmermann, J., & Back, M. D. (2023). Applying multi-modal Social Relations Analyses in personality pathology research. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 14(1), 73–82.

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Rau, R., Carlson, E. N., Dufner, M., Geukes, K., Kraft, L., Krause, S., Nikoleizig, L., Nestler, S., & Back, M. D. (2022). Positivity in peer perceptions over time: Personality explains variation at zero-acquaintance, popularity explains differential change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 123(2), 423–443.

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Rau, R., Lawless DesJardins, N. M., Niemeyer, L. M., Back, M. D., Srivastava, S., & Nestler, S. (2022). Perceiver effects in first impressions reflect generalized stereotypes: Evidence of consistency across time, groups, and contexts. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(7), 1138–1150.

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Heynicke, M., Rau, R., Leising, D., Wessels, N., & Wiedenroth, A. (2022). Perceiver effects in person perception reflect acquiescence, positivity, and trait-specific content: Evidence from a large-scale replication study. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(4), 839–848.

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Rau, R., Carlson, E. N., Back, M. D., Barranti, M., Gebauer, J. E., Human, L. J., Leising, D., & Nestler, S. (2021). What is the structure of perceiver effects? On the importance of global positivity and trait-specificity across personality domains and judgment contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(3), 745–764.

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Rau, R., Nestler, W., Dufner, M., & Nestler, S. (2021). Seeing the best or worst in others: A measure of generalized other-perceptions. Assessment, 28(8), 1897–1914.

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Maaßen, E., Büttner, M., Bröcker, A.-L., Stuke, F., Bayer, S., Hadzibegovic, J., Just, S. A., Bertram, G., Rau, R., Haebler, D. von, Lempa, G., & Montag, C. (2021). Measuring emotional awareness in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders. Frontiers in Psychology, 0, 5225.

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Rau, R., Thielmann, I., Breil, S. M., Geukes, K., Krause, S., Nikoleizig, L., Back, M. D., & Nestler, S. (2020). Do perceiver effects in interpersonal perception predict cooperation in social dilemmas?. Collabra: Psychology, 6(1), 35.

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Garbe, L.*, Rau, R.*, & Toppe, T.* (2020). Influence of perceived threat of Covid-19 and HEXACO personality traits on toilet paper stockpiling. PloS ONE, 15(6). *shared first authorship.

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Rau, R., Nestler, S., Geukes, K., Back, M. D., & Dufner, M. (2019). Can other-derogation be beneficial? Seeing others as low in agency can lead to an agentic reputation in newly formed face-to-face groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(1), 201–227.

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Rau, R., name, & name (2000). Title goes here. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(1), 201–227.