July 24, 2008
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Faculty and Research


The Department of Psychology and Social Behavior is home to an outstanding 25-member faculty, representing several specialties including developmental, social, health, biological, clinical, and community psychology. United by an overarching interest in human adaptation in various sociocultural and developmental contexts, the faculty share a strong commitment to research that has the potential for application to important societal problems. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to research problems is also characteristic of our faculty, reflecting the core values of the School of Social Ecology. These values are reflected in the research interests of the faculty, which include:
  • Social development and developmental transitions across the life course
  • The impact of day care and other social environments on children
  • The challenges of integrating work and family roles
  • The cultural contexts of emotion, cognition, and behavior
  • Personality and psychophysiological processes that underlie health and illness
  • The social, community and cultural contexts of anger, aggression, and violence
  • Neural bases of mathematical and language learning
  • The mental and physical health effects of life stress, including societal stressors such as economic downturns and natural disasters
  • Perceptions of and responses to health and environmental risks
  • Loneliness and social support in later life
  • Decision making at the end of life
  • The psychobiology of stress and its role in health and disease
  • Impacts of increasing Internet use on people's participation in local environments and social networks
  • Ecological analyses of human development, behavior, and well-being
  • Contextual influences on the effectiveness of cross-disciplinary collaborative teams
  • Psychological science and practice as it interacts with the legal system

See individual faculty pages for more information on research interests

The research of faculty members and graduate students combines laboratory methods with more naturalistic approaches in order to achieve an optimal blend of experimental control and generalizability. The natural settings in which faculty members conduct their studies include schools, worksites, homes, community centers, hospitals and medical clinics, psychiatric facilities, and women's shelters. This work has been conducted, moreover, not only in the United States but also in other countries. Thus students who pursue their studies in the Department have the opportunity to gain experience investigating human behavior in clinical and nonclinical populations, in a diverse region of the country as well as in diverse cultures, and in field as well as laboratory settings. Moreover, several of our faculty members have received campus-wide awards for excellence in teaching, in mentoring undergraduate researchers, and in training doctoral students to become effective teachers.

Departmental faculty also enjoy an excellent track record of attracting extramural support for their research, with an average of approximately $1.5 million in annual funding over the last 5 years. Extramural funding for the current fiscal year is over $2.1 in direct costs; multi-year awards to departmental faculty currently exceed $12 million. Current sources of extramural funding for over 20 active grants include the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health and Development, National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute, National Science Foundation, the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

The Faculty

Elizabeth Cauffman Elizabeth E. Cauffman, Associate Professor
Ph.D. Temple University
Specializations: adolescent development, mental health, psychopathy, juvenile justice, female delinquency, legal and social policy
Susan Charles Susan Turk Charles, Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of Southern California
Specializations: emotional processes across the adult life span, subjective experience and cognitive processes, health and emotion
Chuansheng Chen Chuansheng Chen, Professor
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Specializations: cross-cultural psychology, socialization of achievement, adolescent development, brain imaging of language and mathematical learning
Sally Dickerson Sally Dickerson, Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Specializations: stress physiology; psychoneuroimmunology; effects of social evaluation or rejection on emotional and physiological outcomes; self-conscious emotions; health psychology
Peter Ditto Peter H. Ditto, Professor
Ph.D. Princeton University
Specializations: social cognition, motivated judgment and decision-making process, social psychology
C. David Dooley C. David Dooley, Professor and Chair
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Specializations: community psychology, epidemiology, economic change
Ilona Federenko Ilona S. Federenko, Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of Trier, Germany
Specializations: psychobiology of stress, stress in pregnancy, women's health, developmental psychobiology, behavioral genetics, assessment of stress
Joanne Frattaroli Joanne Frattaroli, Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment
Ph.D. University of California, Riverside
Specializations: expressive writing, meta-analysis, positive psychology, health psychology, preventive medicine, educational psychology
Wendy Goldberg Wendy Goldberg, Professor
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Specializations: developmental psychology, work and family, parental involvement in education, transition to parenthood, autism
Jutta Heckhausen Jutta Heckhausen, Professor
Ph.D. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Great Britain

Specializations: life-span developmental psychology, motivation and developmental regulation in children, adolescents, and adults, control and health, cultural universals and differences in achievement behavior

Larry Jamner Larry Jamner, Professor
Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook
Specializations: health psychology, psychophysiology, biopsychosocial factors related to tobacco use in youth
Eric Knowles Eric D. Knowles, Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
Specializations: cultural influences on social judgment; White racial identity; beliefs and attitudes concerning intergroup inequality; social and political ideology
Linda Levine Linda J. Levine, Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of Chicago
Specializations: relations between cognitive and emotional development, how emotions influence attention and memory, the development of children's strategies for coping with negative emotions
Elizabeth Loftus Elizabeth F. Loftus, Distinguished Professor
Ph.D. Stanford University
Specializations: human memory, psychology and the law, how facts, ideas, suggestions and other forms of post-event information can modify our memories
Salvatore Maddi Salvatore R. Maddi, Professor
Ph.D. Harvard University
Specializations: personality, psychopathology, health psychology, creativity
Raymond Novaco Raymond W. Novaco, Professor
Ph.D. Indiana University
Specializations: anger, stress, violence, cognitive-behavioral interventions
Candice Odgers Candice L. Odgers, Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of Virginia
Specializations: developmental psychopathology; longitudinal analysis of growth and change; effects of externalizing disorders on health
JoAnn Prause JoAnn Prause, Senior Lecturer with Security Of Employment
Ph.D. University of California, Irvine
Specializations: social costs of inadequate employment, adverse effects of unemployment, progression of alcohol disorder, early onset drinking among adolescents
Jodi Quas Jodi Anne Quas, Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of California, Davis
Specializations: memory development, the effects of stress on memory, emotional reactivity in childhood, childrens' involvement in the legal system, childrens' eyewitness testimony
Karen Rook Karen S. Rook, Professor
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Specializations: gerontology, social psychology, health psychology, social support and social networks.
Roxane Silver Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor
Ph.D. Northwestern University
Specializations: coping with stressful life events (e.g., personal traumas, natural disasters, terrorism)
Jennifer Skeem Jennifer Skeem, Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of Utah
Specializations: mental illness and criminal justice, personality disorder and antisocial behavior, violence risk assessment and treatment
Daniel Stokols Daniel Stokols, Professor
Ph.D. University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Specializations: health impacts of environmental stressors, environmental design and social behavior, processes and outcomes of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration
Carol Whalen Carol K. Whalen, Professor
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Specializations: child and adolescent psychopathology, ADHD across the life span, developmental health psychology, pharmacotherapy

Emeritus Faculty

K. Alison Clarke-Stewart K. Alison Clarke-Stewart, Research Professor
Ph.D. Yale University
Specializations: development in early childhood and the effects of variation in the social environment
Thomas Crawford, Senior Lecturer Emeritus

Ph.D. Harvard University

Specializations: attitude theory and social problems research
Ellen Greenberger, Research Professor

Ph.D. Harvard University

Specializations: developmental psychology, cross-cultural research, cultural, family and peer influences on "normal" and problematic adolescent development, transition to adulthood, origins and consequences of self-entitlement.
Elaine Vaughan, Research Professor

Ph.D. Stanford University

Specializations: environmental assessment, risk perceptions, research methodology, social psychology

Affiliated Psychology and Social Behavior Faculty

Lecturers and Professional Researchers

 


 
Psychology and Social Behavior
3340 Social Ecology Building II
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-7085
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