Paul Irwing was first appointed as an organisational psychologist, in 1977, at the Ulster Polytechnic. In 1982, this became the University of Ulster at which he continued to work until he joined UMIST, in 2003, as a lecturer in organisational psychology. In 2004, at what is now the University of Manchester, he was promoted to senior lecturer and in 2007 to Reader. He is currently a member of the editorial board of Intelligence, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. His D.Phil. was awarded in 1992, and integrated goal-setting, job characteristics and self-concept theories of work motivation.
Heis the co-founder of the developmental theory of sex differences and has recently pioneered work on the General Factor of Personality, which is conceived of as a generic predictor of life outcomes, including work performance, closely analogous to the General Factor of Human Cognitive Ability. His work has been presented in six articles in Intelligence (Impact Factor (IF) 3.76), two articles in the British Journal of Psychology (IF: 2.28), two articles inTwin Research and Human Genetics (IF:2.14), three articles in the British Journal of Educational Psychology (IF: 2.13), nine articles in Personality and Individual Differences (IF: 1.98), while single articles have appeared in the Journal of Research in Personality (IF: 2.82), European Journal of Personality (IF: 2.79), and in the pre-eminent science journal Nature (IF: 31.2). He currently has a total of over 70 publications including 31 journal articles, and has presented 35 conference papers/lectures. His work has been quoted over 300 times in learned journals. He has given over 40 media interviews on TV and radio and has credit for more than 50 newspaper articles referencing his work, in every major newspaper in the UK and internationally.
