Hogan supported the dissertation research of Megan Wright, a graduate student at the University of York supervised by Dr Sophie von Stumm. Megan’s PhD research focuses on developing a measure for adulthood. Traditionally, adulthood has been defined by social roles such as having a stable job, buying a house, marrying, and having children. But today, young people move frequently between jobs and places, build diverse family structures, and struggle to achieve financial independence. Megan developed the CARES taxonomy to measure adulthood in the modern world. The CARES taxonomy describes five psychological qualities of adulthood: Cognitive maturity (confidence in one’s knowledge), sense of Aging, self-Reliance, Eudaimonia (being in alignment with oneself), and Social convoy. Megan analyzed data from a large sample of UK adults and found that the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism predicted self-reported adult status, and that the five CARES qualities were correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Future research in this area will work towards developing a maturity scale which could be used by practitioners for talent acquisition and development.
Megan’s research was entered into the PhD spotlight competition in which she won 1st place at the competition, which was judged by the Dean of the graduate school, and she won the People’s Choice award, which was voted for by the public.