Research Interests

My research has three primary interests: (a) suicide; (b) strategies for constructing inventories of personality and psychopathology; and (c) methods for detecting faking on self-report inventories. Research on suicide concerns clinical and non-clinical populations and examines the roles of psychache, hopelessness, and motivations in predicting suicide ideation, attempts, and completions. In test construction, my focus is on evaluating the best methods for writing individual test items. Applications include research, clinical, counseling, employment, and forensic contexts. Investigations of faking examine the formulation of models of responding and the search for anomalies that indicate discrepancies (i.e., lies). Research deals with student, psychiatric patient, inmate, and job applicant populations.

Selected Publications

Holden, R. R., & Book, A. S. (2012). Faking does distort self-report personality assessment. In M. Ziegler, C. MacCann, & R. D. Roberts (Eds.), New perspectives on faking in personality assessment (pp. 71-84). Oxford University Press.

Holden, R. R., & Marjanovic, Z. (2012). A putatively general factor of personality (GFP) is not so general: A demonstration with the NEO PI-R. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 37-40.

Holden, R. R., Wheeler, S., & Marjanovic, Z. (2012). When does random responding distort self-report personality assessment? An example with the NEO PI-R. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 15-20.

Holden, R. R., & Passey, J. (2010). Socially desirable responding in personality assessment: Not necessarily faking and not necessarily substance. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 446-450.

Paulhus, D. L., & Holden, R. R. (2010). Measuring self-enhancement: From self-report to concrete behavior. In C. R. Agnew, D. E. Carlston, W. G. Graziano, & J. R. Kelly (Eds.), Then a miracle occurs: Focusing on behavior in social psychological theory and research (pp. 221-240). New York: Oxford University Press.

Pereira, E. J., Kroner, D. G., Holden, R. R., & Flamenbaum, R. (2010). Testing Shneidman’s model of suicidality in incarcerated offenders and in undergraduates. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 912-917.

Troister, T., & Holden, R. R. (2010). Comparing psychache, depression, and hopelessness in their associations with suicidality: A test of Shneidman’s theory of suicide. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 689-693.

DeLisle, M. M., & Holden, R. R. (2009). Differentiating between depression, hopelessness, and psychache in university undergraduates. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 42, 46-63.

Gilron, I., Bailey, J. M., Tu, D., Holden, R. R., Jackson, A. C., & Houlden, R. L. (2009). Nortriptyline and gabapentin, alone and in combination for neuropathic pain: A double-blind randomised controlled crossover trial. The Lancet, 374, 1252-1261.

Holden, R. R., & Book, A. S. (2009). Using hybrid Rasch-latent class modelling to improve the detection of fakers on a personality inventory. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 185-190.

Holden, R. R. (2008). Underestimating the effects of faking on the validity of self-report personality scales. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 311-321.