Chris J. Jackson is a faculty member at The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is a personality and organizational psychologist who uses a variety of cognitive models to conduct research on the structure and development of personality within applied contexts.
Early Life and Educational Background
Jackson was born in 1963 in Northampton, U.K. After beginning a Psychology Undergraduate Degree in 1981 at the University of Birmingham, he rapidly realized that his ambition was to work at a University. He earned his MPhil. and Ph.D. in Psychology and Statistics from the University of Coventry in the UK. This was a formative time for him as he completed both with little or no supervisory assistance.
Professional career
Jackson has held positions in Psychology Departments at London Guildhall University, U.K., and University of Surrey, U.K. In 2000, Jackson moved to Australia and took a job in Psychology at The University of Queensland. In 2008, he took a Professorship in the School of Management at The University of New South Wales. He was Head of School from 2012 – 2015.
He has authored more than 110 publications during his career which have appeared in outlets such as the Psychological Bulletin (in press), Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Journal of Personality, Journal of Research in Personality and Laterality.
Research Interests
Jackson’s research concerns understanding the processes underlying learning and personality from biological and cognitive perspectives. His interests span different areas of individual differences including the biological basis of personality, disinhibition, laterality, how learning is related to personality, and how all this predicts performance. He is best known for his work on Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity (RST) and how it can be extended and applied. In 2009, he developed the Jackson Five questionnaire to measure revised RST and in 2005 he developed the Hybrid Model of Learning in Personality (HMLP). The HMLP is a theory based questionnaire that predicts top workplace performance all the way through to poor performance, subversive performance and clinical depression. HMLP also provides a measurement model of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). He has also worked with Professor Hans Eysenck and Dr Glenn Wilson on the development of the Eysenck Personality Profiler (EPP) which is widely used across the world. To date, Jackson has attracted more than $1M of grant income across three ARC grants. Moreover he has extensive contact with industry and with entrepreneurs in Sydney. Finally, Jackson enjoys public speaking at academic and business conferences.
