| graduate Affiliates |
| UCLA doctoral students who conduct empirical research on some aspect of social relationships, broadly defined to include dating, marriage, family relations, friendship, student-teacher relationships, relations at work, etc., are encouraged to become IRSP Graduate Student Affiliates. For more information go to IRSP Graduate Affiliate and Certificate Programs |
Frederick, David (Psychology) Advisors: Anne Peplau, Martie Haselton, Clark Barrett, Dan FesslerUndergraduate School: Beloit College Undergraduate Major(s): Biological Bases of Behavior; Psychology My program of research examines the ways that evolutionary processes have influenced the way we think and act. In particular, I investigate the impact of cultural and social transmission processes on body satisfaction, perceptions of what is attractive, and relationship processes, and how our evolved psychology influences these perceptions. I am currently analyzing the results of several large studies (Ns = 30,000-70,000) that I have conducted in collaboration with MSNBC.com. These studies focus on social and individual factors that predict infidelity, relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, jealousy, body satisfaction, lifetime number of sex partners, stress and arguments in relationships, and STD risk. |
Garth, Hanna (Anthropology) Advisors: Linda Garro & Carole BrownerUndergraduate School: Rice Undergraduate Major(s): Anthropology, Hispanic Studies, Policy Studies Health care decision making is a very complicated process through which a patient may end up utilizing a modern biomedical health care institution or traditional healing methods. I am interested in addressing the following --What factors push patients to seek care, especially when faced with barriers to access (financial, cultural, language related)? Are pain and suffering important factors? How does a patient’s family life or close personal relationships impact their health care decision making? Does a patient's marginalized social status effect whether not they seek health care or where they seek it? For my dissertation work, I am particularly interested in working with those who are marginalized within their own communities (LGBT populations, people who are discriminated against based on the color of their skin, or those whose illnesses stigmatize them). I hope to work in Latin American or the Caribbean. |
Ghavami, Negin (Social Psychology) Advisors: Anne Peplau and David SearsUndergraduate School: UCLA Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology with minor in English My program of research focuses broadly on intergroup relations. In particular, I am interested in better understanding the relationship between minority and majority group members in the U.S. Two broad questions have guided my work. First, how do minority social identities (e.g., being African American, lesbian or Muslim) affect individuals' everyday life experiences? Second, how do majority group members (e.g., Caucasians, heterosexuals or Christians) perceive and interact with minority group members - and what impact do these interactions have on individuals from both groups? |
Henderson, Jessica (Anthropology) Advisor: Candy Goodwin, Tom Weisner and Linda GarroUndergraduate School: Uuniversity of Pennsylvania Undergraduate Major(s): Anthropology My proposed plan of study is concerned with how race and ethnic identity shape the ways children play together, focusing on the peer relationships of Latino and African American students in South Los Angeles. Due to rapid migration over the past 25 years, South Los Angeles, once the heart of Los Angeles' African American community, has become a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Despite commonalities in socio-economic status and shared investment in social issues for African Americans and Latinos, racial and ethnic differences have led to gang violence and enduring turf wars in this neighborhood. The proposed project will examine the following questions: How do issues of racial identity affect play between African American and Latino children? How do children conceptualize the cultural other? How does the culture/ social context of a school play a role in development of racial identity? And how do children talk to each other about race and ethnicity? |
Ho, Alice (Graduate School of Education and Information Studies) Advisor: Sandra GrahamUndergraduate School: UCLA Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology and Education minor My main research interests include adolescent social development, peer relationships, ethnic identity, and academic achievement. Currently, I coordinate an on-going longitudinal study examining the social, psychological, and academic development of adolescents in urban schools. With this study, I am examining whether adolescents adopt the antisocial behaviors of peers that they admire, consider cool or popular, and affiliate with or desire to affiliate with. In the future, I hope to extend this work to include prosocial behaviors like academic outcomes. I am also interested in how social context influences ethnic identity development during adolescence. Specifically, I am exploring how the ethnic composition of the school impacts one's ethnic identity development in terms of private and public regard and centrality. |
Larson, Christina ( Social Psychology) Advisor: Martie HaseltonUndergraduate School: Washington University in St. Louis Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Broadly, I am interested in studying long term romantic relationships from an evolutionary perspective. More specifically, I am interested in investigating the influence of various factors on relationship quality and stability. |
Locke, Jill (Psychological Studies in Education) Advisor: Connie KasariUndergraduate School: UCLA Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology, Education minor My research centers on the social and emotional development of children and adolescents with autism. More specifically, I am interested in how children and adolescents with autism establish and maintain friendships and how they understand and perceive emotions. For the past two years, under the mentorship of my advisor, Dr. Connie Kasari, I have participated in a randomized, controlled, school-based intervention study for children with high-functioning autism included in regular education first through fifth grade classrooms. This research study examines the effects of targeted social skills interventions on the peer relationships and social networks of elementary-age children with autism. One goal of this study is to determine whether social skills can be taught to school-aged children with autism included in regular education classrooms and whether these skills affect friendship formation, feelings of loneliness, and social inclusion. In the near future, I intend on examining the qualitative differences of friendship from childhood to adolescence. |
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Manago, Adriana (Developmental Psychology) |
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McKay, Tara (Sociology) |
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Moore, Tyler (Quantitative Psychology)
 Advisors: Steve Reese; Martie HaseltonUndergraduate School: Pomona College Undergraduate Major(s): Economics Since I'm a quantitative student, the bulk of my work focuses on statistical/methodological issues. My content interests, though, revolve around evolutionary psychology and sexual selection. At the moment, I'm interested in the psychological effects of birth control on women, especially as they relate to romantic relationships. Hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle are proven to affect a woman's personality, sex drive, creativity, mate preferences (e.g., which male features and "types" of men she finds most attractive), and several other outcomes. Given that birth control influences the concentrations and activities of such hormones, it makes sense to examine the effects of birth control, per se, on all the above outcomes. The relationship I pay most attention to is [Birth Control] -> [Mate Choice], but all effects are relevant, especially in a realm as broad as "romantic relationships". |
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Poore, Joshua C. (Social Psychology)
 Advisors: Shelly Gable and Martie HasleltonUndergraduate School: University of California, Santa Barbara Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology I am generally interested in why the mind takes the form that it does, especially as it pertains to the psychology of close relationships. For example, why do we feel so intensely for someone at the beginning of a romantic relationship when we know little about them, but feel less so as the relationship progresses? As form follows function we can discover the rationality for some of our most seemingly illogical behaviors by carefully hypothesizing about the various functions the mind serves. I examine functional hypotheses from a variety of perspectives including: social psychology, evolutionary psychology, affective neuroscience, and economics. Currently I am developing such a functional account for Passionate Love based on neurological models of reward systems and learning systems, economic models of emotions, and evolutionary reasoning. |
Preston, Kathleen (Quantitative Psychology) Advisor: Steve ReiseUndergraduate School: California State University, Fullerton Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology, Music I am just beginning my PhD program at UCLA, so I have not yet begun my research in this program. However, as a Masters student at CSUF, I applied multiple regression in a project to predict casual sexual relationships and subsequent condom use in a college-based population. I also analyzed previously collected data from an intervention study -a randomized pretest-posttest four-group design- implementing existing behavior-change theory to increase condom use in a University population. My Masters thesis involved a scale construction of a casual physical acquaintance attitudinal scale, and applying the existing Theory of Planned Behavior to predict subsequent casual physical acquaintance behavior. Additionally, I applied second-order factor analysis to further validate the scale. I am interested in research related to the application of structural equation modeling and item response theory to various aspects within Social psychology and, specifically, the study of interpersonal relationships. My interests include the application of model invariance to factor analysis, validation of causal structures, and hierarchical linear modeling. I would like to utilize statistical models in personality assessment and evaluating the underlying dynamics of interpersonal relationships. I look forward to becoming a strong contributor to both the areas of Interpersonal Relationship Science and Quantitative Psychology and plan on continually integrating the two areas. |
Saxbe, Darby (Clinical Psychology) Advisors: Rena Repetti and Shelley TaylorUndergraduate School: Yale University Undergraduate Major(s): English Literature and Psychology I am interested in close relationships and their impact on mental and physical health. Since beginning the clinical psychology program at UCLA, where I am now in my fourth year, I have participated in several projects exploring the long-term effects of aversive family social environments, including a collaboration with advisor Shelley Taylor on the neural correlates of threat perception among offspring of "risky families." As a member of UCLA's Center for Everyday Lives of Families (CELF), I have worked on an intensive study of middle-class family life that included saliva sampling for hormonal assays. I wrote my master's thesis (currently in press at Health Psychology) on the CELF adults' cortisol patterns, finding that, for women but not men, marital dissatisfaction seemed to predict a weaker basal diurnal cortisol rhythm and attenuated physiological recovery from stressful workdays. I am now beginning to work on my dissertation, three interrelated papers using CELF data. The first paper will explore stress contagion processes within couples, the second paper will examine family behavior at home in the evening and physiological unwinding from the workday, and the third paper will explore associations between family members' home tours and their subsequent cortisol rhythms. In addition to dissertation research, I continue to pursue a related interest in the familial predictors of pubertal timing. With advisor Rena Repetti, I recently completed a paper that reported on associations between parents' assessments of their marital relationship and girls' pubertal development several years later. Next, I will be examining retrospective pubertal timing reports in conjunction with data on "risky family" backgrounds and physiological stress responding in a laboratory study run by Dr. Taylor. |
Skala, Joseph (Sociology) Advisor: Jack KatzUndergraduate School: University of Iowa Undergraduate Major(s): Anthropology In general, my interest is in the development and experience of selfhood and other-awareness with special attention to the role that embodiment might play in these processes. My previous work along these lines has been to critically examine the philosophical underpinnings of what sociology presumes to be the basis for selfhood and identity. In addition to continuing to develop these investigations, I also plan to pursue research into the relationship between changes in the body and their effect on close relationships in persons with acquired disability. I am also working to develop a research angle that allows me to explore the nature of interpersonal violence. |
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Strohm, Charles Q. (Sociology, M.S Epidemiology)
 Advisor: Judith SeltzerUndergraduate School: Brown Undergraduate Major(s): Sociology I am interested in the formation and dissolution of same-sex relationships. My Masters paper investigated the socio-demographic correlates of being in a cohabiting and "living apart together" relationship among lesbians, gay men, and heterosexual women and men. I am also working on a paper that explores the matching patterns of partners in same-sex cohabiting, heterosexual cohabiting, and married couples. Lastly, I am finishing a paper that compares the sources and levels of perceived social support across sexual orientation and gender groups. |
Telzer, Eva (Psychology) Advisors: Andrew Fuligni and Matt LiebermanUndergraduate School: Mount Holyoke College Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology I am generally interested in how family relationships and family processes affect adolescents' development, particularly among ethnic minority and immigrant youth: how do parents mollify or exacerbate positive and negative well being? I use multiple methodologies including daily diaries, traditional questionnaires, fMRI, and PNI to examine how cultural values are transmitted from parents to their children, how these values are manifested behaviorally and psychologically, and what the implications of these values are for adjustment including psychological well being, academic achievement, and physical health. |
Trombello, Joe (Psychology) Advisors: Thomas Bradbury and Constance HammenUndergraduate School: Notre Dame Undergraduate Major(s): Psychology and English My Masters' project centers on the connection between life stressors and depressive symptoms in married couples. Specifically, my work draws on Constance Hammen's research on depression in terms of stress generation, or the tendency for depressive symptoms to lead to an increase in subsequent interpersonal life stressors. Participants are drawn from a longitudinal study of newlywed couples during their first four years of marriage. I am currently examining factors that mediate or moderate the association between depressive systems and later life stressors. My research focuses on both intrapersonal (e.g. neuroticism, personal history of depression) and interpersonal (e.g. social support or expressed emotion/criticism provided by one's spouse during conflict and supportive discussions) factors. I hope to extend this work into the realm of genetics to explore gene by environment interactions between depressive symptoms and environmental stressors such as spousal criticism/hostility or low provision of social support from one's partner. |
Advisors: Patricia Greenfield and Tom Weisner
Advisors: Stefan Timmermans, Susan Watkins, Megan Sweeney
