Anu Realo - Biography#

Anu Realo (PhD in Psychology) is a personality and cross-cultural psychologist. She is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, the United Kingdom and a Visiting Professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia. In 2018, she was elected to the Estonian Academy of Sciences.

Her background is in personality and cross-cultural psychology and she has conducted considerable research on personality traits, subjective wellbeing, and cultural characteristics such as individualism-collectivism, social capital, and tightness-looseness. She is the Principal Investigator for the World Values Survey in Estonia. In total, she has published more than 180 papers or book chapters, including more than 130 articles in high quality peer-reviewed international journals. In 2010, she received the National Science Award of the Republic of Estonia in social sciences for her studies on personality and stereotypes in a cross-cultural perspective. In 2016, she was awarded the Order of the White Star (IV Class) by the President of Estonia for her outstanding service and contribution to the Republic of Estonia. She is active in public engagement work on topics relating to her research; her work has been extensively covered and cited by national and international news media.

She has had numerous administrative and professional responsibilities both at the national and international level. During the years 2012‐2015, she served as the Vice‐Chair of the Evaluation Board of the Estonian Research Council—the main (and only) research funding body in Estonia. For more than ten years, she was actively involved in the European Social Survey (ESS)–most recently as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the ESS ERIC (2013-2020). She currently serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick and the President of the European Association for Personality Psychology.