Personality science has evolved from an understanding of personality as fixed traits to one that acknowledges that personality is dynamic. Dynamic approaches to conceptualising and measuring personality and individual differences can enrich personality-health research.

Professor Suzanna Segerstrom of the University of Kentucky will consider how different formulations of personality-stable traits, stable signals in a noisy or variable measure, within-person changes, and intraindividual variability - can be implemented to better understand how personality is related to health and particularly to immune function. These approaches recognise and, in some cases, capitalise on the fact that personality is capable of variability as well as stability. They also require repeated measurement and therefore greater methodological sophistication that considers reliability and generalisability, Simpson's paradox and ergocity, and the difference between variability and flexibility. 

Dynamic qualities of personality and individual differences potentially influence health, and designs and methodology that incorporate them can illuminate the important processes that occur inside the error bars.