Expertise
As a lifespan developmental psychologist, I am trained to be mindful of the "big picture."
I am interested in the mental and physical health of young, middle-aged, and older adults, especially as a function of social relations and social networks. My research focuses on changes in social relationships and social networks across important life transitions, such as starting college and retirement, as well as on individual differences in the effects of social relations on health (e.g., gender and personality differences). I am also interested in and have conducted research on related issues, such as interpersonal dependency, attachment, emotions, marriage and divorce, religion, and spirituality. I am actively conducting research on many of these topics, using large publicly-available data sets as well as my own longitudinal data collected from over 300 first-year college students.
I have recently become interested in how individuals in romantic relationships negotiate the merging of their social networks (e.g., upon marriage), and how these 'joint social networks' change over time and influence the trajectory of the relationship (e.g., divorce). I have written several papers based on the Early Years of Marriage Study, a 16-year longitudinal study of Black and White newlywed couples from Detroit. I am also working on grants to examine these joint social networks in more detail among retiring couples and newlyweds.
I am also interested in the adaptive versus maladaptive nature of expressive behavior (in particular, crying), which is germane to social relations, and I have collected data on this topic.