Sophie von Stumm (born 1983 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

in education who studies the causes and consequences of individual differences in psychological and behavioural development across the life course.

Biography

von Stumm attended the Schadow-Gymnasium in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

which she graduated from with an Abitur certificate in 2002. After receiving a

BSc degree A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

Royal Holloway University Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public university, public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, ...

in 2006 and an MSc at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

in 2007, she completed her

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in Psychology at

Goldsmiths University Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wo ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

on the topic of intelligence-personality associations in 2010. Afterwards she was awarded an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship that she completed at the Department of Psychology at the

. She was lecturer and senior lecturer in Psychology at

of London (2012-2017) and Associate Professor at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

(2017-2019). She is currently professor of psychology in education at the

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

. von Stumm's work has been funded by the British Academy, Wellcome Trust, the Jacobs Foundation, and the

John Templeton Foundation The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John Templeton, who became wealthy via a career as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious an ...

. She has developed two research smartphone apps. She won the APS Rising Star Award in 2015 and the ISSID Early Career Award in 2013. She is recipient of a Jacobs Foundation Fellowship 2017-2019.

Research

von Stumm studies the causes and consequences of

individual differences Differential psychology studies the ways in which individuals differ in their behavior and the processes that underlie it. This is a discipline that develops classifications (taxonomies) of psychological individual differences. This is distingui ...

in psychological and behavioural development across the life course. She takes an

inter-disciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

approach to observing

behaviour Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

and environments, primarily through the application of new assessment technologies that enable collecting big, high-quality data. She focuses her studies in particular on three areas: (1) the effects of early life environments on children’s

language development Language development in humans is a process starting early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begin ...

; (2) the role of

personality traits In psychology, trait theory (also called dispositional theory) is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of ''traits'', which can be defined as habitual patterns of behaviour, tho ...

curiosity Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in humans ...

and

imagination Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations ...

for

learning Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machine learning, machines ...

; and (3) the relationship between genome-wide

polygenic scores In genetics, a polygenic score (PGS), also called a polygenic risk score (PRS), polygenic index (PGI), genetic risk score, or genome-wide score, is a number that summarizes the estimated effect of many genetic variants on an individual's phenotyp ...

and

educational attainment Educational attainment is a term commonly used by statisticians to refer to the highest degree of education an individual has completed as defined by the US Census Bureau Glossary. See also *Academic achievement *Academic degree *Bachelor's degree ...

Representative publications

* von Stumm, S., Hell, B., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2011). The hungry mind: Intellectual curiosity as third pillar of academic performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 574-588. * Plomin, R., & von Stumm, S. (2018). The new genetics of intelligence. Nature Reviews Genetics, doi:10.1038/nrg.2017.104. * d'Apice, K., Latham, R., & von Stumm, S. (2019). A naturalistic home observational approach to children's language, cognition, and behaviour. Developmental Psychology, 55(7), 1414-1427.

References

External links

*
Hungry Mind Lab, directed by Sophie von Stumm
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stumm, Sophie Von 1983 births Living people Alumni of Royal Holloway, University of London Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of York