University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D.
University of California, Los Angeles, M.A.
University of Pennsylvania, B.A.
1285 Franz Hall
Box 951563
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563
Research Interest:
I graduated from the Social Psychology doctoral program in 2009, and my minors were in Health Psychology and Measurement. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the ways in which one's external social environment can influence one's internal mental and physical health. For example, I am interested in how having supportive others in one's life may attenuate one's biological and emotional responses to stressful and/or painful circumstances. In my dissertation, we utilized fMRI methodology to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms by which social support may have attenuating effects on the distress associated with physical discomfort. This project is a fundamental step in understanding how social support gets 'under the skin' to affect biological and emotional health outcomes via neural mechanisms.
While at UCLA, I was also involved in research exploring the neurocognitive and biological mechanisms underlying the beneficial health outcomes associated with emotional-approach coping; a project looking at the relationships between social support and autonomic, neuroendocrine, and immune responses to stress; a project utilizing electroencephalography (EEG) to measure asymmetrical frontal cortical activity and conflict-detection sensitivity associated with the behavioral activation and inhibition systems (BAS/BIS); a project looking at the social, mental, and biological health correlates of direct and indirect forms of self-promotion; and a project concerning how people from different cultures utilize social support.