| IRSP Affiliated Faculty (A-F) (G-R) (S-Z) |
| Walter R. Allen - Education & Information Studies; Sociology My research focuses on factors in the interpersonal/social context that influence student achievement. In this connection I have studied: family socialization and achievement; hostile campus climate and racial micro- aggressions at various levels along the educational pipeline, e.g., K-12, college, graduate and professional school. |
| Clark Barrett - Anthropology I study the evolution of domain-specific cognitive capacities, in particular, peoples' understanding of intentions and intentionality in social interactions. I also study processes of social transmission from adults to children in cognitive development. |
| Julie Bower - Psychology My research examines mind-body interactions among individuals facing traumatic life events, with a focus on cancer. I am interested in positive changes that occur following exposure to stress, including positive changes in personal relationships, and the impact of these changes on mental and physical health. |
|
Thomas Bradbury - Psychology
Thomas Bradbury conducts research on the longitudinal course of marriages and families, as a means of providing a foundation for interventions undertaken to strengthen intimate relationships. His research emphasizes data collection via observation and interviews. |
| Jennie Brand - Sociology My research focuses on social stratification and mobility, including relative mobility. My specific research interests include the effects of and relationship between (1) social background / social capital, (2) educational attainment / human capital, and (3) labor market processes / job conditions on socioeconomic attainment and well-being, including levels of relative attainment and well-being, across the life course. |
| Carole H. Browner - Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Anthropology My research has focused on how power, as it is structured and enacted in everyday activities, shapes human reproductive behavior. I have done field research in urban Colombia, rural Mexico, and with diverse ethnic groups in the U. S. In Cali, Colombia I investigated the circumstances that led pregnant women with unintended conceptions to seek illegal abortion. In rural Mexico, I sought to understand how local political relations shape gender-based reproductive strategies. Since 1989, I have worked mainly in the U. S. on issues surrounding the medicalization of pregnancy and prenatal care, and particularly how pregnant women and their male partners make decisions about the use of fetal diagnosis. |
| Greg Bryant - Communication Studies I am interested broadly in the evolution of communication and cognition. In my research, I examine how acoustic structure in speech is shaped by communicative goals. I have done work on infant-directed speech across cultures, how people use vocal cues to communicate pragmatically relevant information, and the acoustic features of other vocal phenomena such as laughter, ovulatory cues, and speech disfluencies. |
| Andrew Christensen - Psychology I am interested in the processes and outcome of couple therapy. In addition, I am interesting in couple conflict, particularly in the pattern of conflict in which one partner tends to demand and the other to withdraw. |
| Chris Dunkel-Schetter - Psychology Stress and social support processes in general. Specific health-related research interests: Biological, ethnic and cultural, emotional and social processes in pregnancy and birth and effects on infants and children. Emerging interest in resilience, especially spirituality, in adults. |
| Naomi I. Eisenberger - Psychology My program of research borrows from social psychology, affective/cognitive neuroscience, and health psychology to understand: a) the processes that motivate social connection and b) the mechanisms whereby social connection impacts mental and physical health. Most recently, I have focused on the neurocognitive and physiological correlates of 'social pain,' the painful feelings that follow social rejection. Currently, I am investigating the neural and physiological systems that underlie the positive, contented feelings experienced with close others. |
| Daniel M.T. Fessler - Anthropology I study interpersonal emotions (principally shame, anger, disgust, and guilt); sex and reproduction (including mate selection and the effects of reproductive cycling on social behavior); violence and risk-taking; and the social determinants of conformity and cooperation. |
| Alan Page Fiske - Anthropology Basic structures of social coordination, including their psychological, cultural, neurobiological, and evolutionary sources, together with their links to psychopathology. |
| Andrew J. Fuligni - Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences; Psychology Dr. Fuligni's research focuses on family relationships and adolescent development among culturally and ethnically diverse populations. He currently is employing a variety of methods in order to understand how the youths' sense of duty and obligation to the family shapes their psychological well-being and decision-making about education, employment, and family formation. |
| Shelly L. Gable - Psychology (University of California, Santa Barbara) I examine motivation, emotion, health, and well-being in the context of close personal relationships. Specifically, I am interested in how approach social motive and goal systems differ from avoidance social motive and goal systems. For example, how does "wanting to find someone" or "have fun with my wife" differ from "not wanting to be alone" or "not fight with my wife" in terms of attention, emotional experience, and social interaction? |
| Linda C. Garro - Anthroplogy My interests include medical and cognitive anthropology. As a faculty fellow at CELF, I am working to develop an integrated perspective on health-related activities within middle-class dual-career family life by attending to the processes, social supports (social networks), and artifacts relied upon by family members to promote the health and well-being of those in the family. For example, how do family members recognize, respond to and manage ill health? What do family members do to promote wellbeing in daily family life? |
| Gary J. Gates - The Charles R. Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law (UCLA School of Law) I study the demographic and economic characteristics of the gay and lesbian population, particularly gay and lesbian couples. Much of my research focuses on detailed analyses of same-sex "unmarried partners" identified in the US Census. |
| Gian Gonzaga - Senior Research Scientist, eHarmony Labs at eHarmony.com; Psychology My research interests include the role of emotions in close relationships, the predictors of marriage success, the predictors of initial attraction in relationships, social interactions between relationship partners, and measurement of relationship satisfaction. I am currently director of eHarmony labs and am conducting a 600 couple longitudinal study of marriage, developing marital satisfaction measures in other cultures (China), and running studies investigating how romantic partners interact with each other and the implications for that relationship. |
| Marjorie Harness Goodwin - Anthropology My work investigates the embodied interactive language practices through which members of social groups constitute their social and emotional life. I am concerned with the role of gender, friendship, power, and exclusion in children's peer groups. In my work at the Center for Everyday Lives of Families I explore negotiation and knowledge exploration as dynamic processes within families. |
| Sandra Graham - Education I study children and adolescents' peer relations. My specific interests are in peer aggression and peer victimization, and the ethnic context in which these peer relations unfold. I have a particular focus on the ethnic composition of classroom and schools as contexts that can buffer the negative effects of peer harassment. |
| Patricia Greenfield - Psychology I am interested in the cultural structuring of personal relationships in the developmental process. I explore this issue through the study of (1) social change and its intergenerational effects, (2) cross-cultural value conflict between Latino immigrant families and the broader society, (3) intergroup relations among high school students, and (4) personal relationships among youth on the Internet. |
| Martie G. Haselton - Communication Studies; Psychology I study relationships from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. My recent research focuses on two main areas. In the first, I examine how women's experiences, desires, and behaviors change across the ovulatory cycle. I am particularly interested in discovering the "hidden side of female desire" that reveals itself only at peak fertility within the cycle. In the second, I explore the hypothesis that evolution has shaped biased social judgment strategies that can lead to miscommunication between the sexes. |
| Kerri Johnson - Communication Studies My research examines some of the fundamental precursors to the development of relationships - basic person construal. In my lab we explore how facial and body cues convey a considerable amount of information about an individual (e.g., sex and race category membership, the degree of gender typicality, and sexual orientation) and how these basic perceptions subsequently impact evaluative social judgments. We use a variety of methods including computer generated animations, corneal reflection eye-tracking, facial electromyography, and motion capture/analysis. |
| Jaana Juvonen - Psychology I study young adolescents relationship's with their peers and how these relationships are related to the development and adaptive functioning of youth. The main topics that I have investigated over the years include the study of social motivational analyses of perceived deviance and peer rejection, development of self-presentation strategies, perceived peer group norms and public behavior of young teens, and bullying or peer harassment in school. |
| Benjamin R. Karney - Psychology Dr. Karney studies how initially positive evaluations of intimate relationships change or remain stable over time. His recent work focuses on how the context of intimate relationships (e.g., socioeconomic status, the presence of stress or support outside the dyad) affects processes within those relationships. His work has primarily addressed these issues within samples of couples in their early years of marriage. |
| Nancy E. Levine - Anthropology I am a socio-cultural anthropologist with a specialization in kinship and household studies and a regional specialization in South and Central Asia. I have focused on the impact of political and economic reforms on family systems among pastoralists in Tibet, China and the impact of social and demographic changes and the recent civil war on interpersonal relationships among peasant farmers in northwest Nepal. |
| Matt Lieberman - Psychology I conduct research, in collaboration with Naomi Eisenberger, that examines the neural underpinnings of the need for social connection. In particular, we have used fMRI to demonstrate that social pain (i.e. the pain of social exclusion) activates brain regions similar to those associated with physical pain. |
| Joseph H. Manson - Anthropology I study social relationships in free-living nonhuman primates. I have studied female mate choice in rhesus macaques, and a variety of topics (e.g. female-female grooming and dominance relationships; post-conflict reconciliation; "allomothering") as part of an ongoing, long-term field study of white-faced capuchin monkeys. |
| Robert D. Mare - Sociology I am a social demographer interested in the links between demographic processes and social inequality. A key part of this work is the study of assortative mating (i.e., the resemblance) of married couples and other intimate partners on social dimensions, including education, socioeconomic background, ethnicity, and religion; and the implications of assortative mating for the marriage markets and the intergenerational reproduction of inequality among persons and families. |
| Patricia McDonough - Education My research focuses on students' college choice decision making, high school counseling, the impact of college rankings of students' college choices, access for African-American and Latino students, rural college access, as well as parents' and students' sociocultural understandings of college affordability. |
| Mignon Moore - Sociology; African-American Studies I have two research projects dealing with personal relationships. One involves qualitative analyses of relationship formation, relationship development, and social processes in black lesbian-headed families. The other employes quantitative analyses of social processes and relationship quality in interracial and same-race couples in the Fragile Families data. |
| Elinor Ochs - Anthropology; Applied Linguistics A central concern of my research lies in the linguistic,interactional, and cultural structuring of human relationships and groups across the life span, across settings, and across communities. Of particular interest are the the manifold verbal and non-verbally codified and displayed activities, sentiments, dispositions, and demeanors that routinely constitute the family as a social unit and the child as a relationally competent actor. I presently direct the UCLA Sloan Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF), which examines (through methods of anthropology, psychology, education, and linguistics) how working parents manage the everyday exigencies of both their work and their family and home life. |
| Marjorie Faulstich Orellana - Education My research focuses on the work that the children of immigrants do as translators, interpreters, and cultural brokers for their families, and the transcultural skills that this work fosters. I use mixed-methods within an ethnographic framework to understand the relational nature of this work, the meanings it takes on in immigrant households, and ways in which these skills and experiences can be leveraged for learning in school. |
| Anne Peplau - Psychology I am centrally interested in how gender and sexual orientation affect close relationships. My work has included studies of the intimate relationships of heterosexuals, lesbians and gay men. |
| Susan E. Perry - Anthropology I study the dynamics of social relationships in nonhuman primates. My taxonomic specialty is white-faced capuchin monkeys, and for 15 years I have been studying the social dynamics of several wild capuchin groups in Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica. I am particularly interested in the ways in which individuals communicate about their social relationships, both gesturally and vocally. |
| Rena Repetti - Psychology I am interested in the role that the family social environment plays in the health and well being of parents and children. In particular, I study the dynamic interplay between an individual's efforts to cope with daily stressors and patterns of family interaction. This work originates in a social ecological perspective, one in which family members' daily lives outside of the home are understood to be intimately intertwined with life within the home. |
| Robert Rhoads - Education A major stream of inquiry that I have engaged in over the past 15 years or so is focused on the experiences of college students engaged in community service and social/political activism. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which social relations within the context of service and activism contribute to the identity development of students. In essence, and synthesizing aspects of symbolic interactionism and critical theory, I examine how students' sense of self is formed and reformed within the context of engaged student groups, communities, and subcultures. |
| Ted Robles - Psychology My research interests involve understanding how social connections influence health, with a focus on two general biological pathways: Allostatic pathways that include regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and immune and inflammatory responses to injury and infection, and restorative pathways; and "restorative" pathways including wound healing and sleep. My research will involve daily diary and laboratory studies of physiology in married couples and in a separate line of work, individuals with social anxiety disorder. |
| Linda J. Sax - Education Linda Sax conducts research on gender differences in college student development, specifically how institutional characteristics, interactions with peers and faculty, and forms of student involvement may differentially affect male and female college students. She is currently using nationwide data to study how students make the transition from single-sex high schools to coeducational colleges and will examine the nature of same-sex and cross-sex friendships during the transition period. |
| Emanuel A. Schegloff - Sociology; Applied Linguistics For me, direct interaction between persons is the primordial site of sociality. I am interested in exploring what we can learn about any of social science's traditional concerns through the detailed naturalistic study of interaction. In the course of pursuing this goal through the close study of (audio and/or video) recorded episodes of all manner of naturally occurring interaction, it has turned out that we can also discover previously unrecognized concerns for social science, and ones which appear to be central to the organization of conduct in interaction and of persons' experience of it. This mode of studying interaction ends up as an instrument for studying a broad range of topics in sociology and related disciplines. Among these topics, relationships figure in a major way, for one of the principal design features of interaction is "recipient design," that is, designing one's talk for its recipient, in which one's relationship to recipient can not but loom large. |
| Teresa Seeman- Medicine (division of Geriatrics, School of Medicine), Epidemiology (School of Public Health) My research focuses on understanding the effects of social relationships on trajectories of aging, including a focus on both the positive and negative effects of such relationships on major outcomes such as morbidity, functional status and mortality with particularly attention to elucidating the biological pathways that may account for any health effects. |
| Judith A. Seltzer - Sociology My research focuses on kinship institutions that are in flux, such as marriage and cohabitation in the contemporary United States or divorced and nonmarital families, in which family membership and co-residence do not coincide. My research examines such issues as the effects on divorce of parents' attitudes about the likely costs of divorce, the effects of normative environment on teenagers' substance use, and change in young women's attitudes about the number of children they want to have. I am also involved in an interdisciplinary collaboration to design new models for studying family change and variation, where my efforts currently focus on inter-generational and intra-generational relationships. Common themes in my research include concerns about inequality within and between families, (recent) historical change in family life, and ways to improve the quality of data used to study families. |
| Jenessa Shapiro - Psychology Why are intergroup interactions sometimes awkward? Why do intergroup contexts sometimes elicit negative consequences, such as stereotype threat? In the Social Interaction and Social Stigma Lab (SISSL) we explore these questions and more, with a primary interest in understanding intergroup interaction and intergroup relations from the perspective of both interactants (those frequently and infrequently targeted by prejudice). |
| Joan B. Silk - Anthropology, Center for Behavior, Evolution & Culture I am interested in how evolutionary processes shape the structure and function of social bonds. I am currently interested in the origins of prosocial preferences and friendship in humans, and in the functional consequences of close social bonds among female primates. |
| Megan Sweeney - Sociology Professor Sweeney's research interests focus on the determinants and consequences of family transitions in the United States, with a particular emphasis on variation over historical time, across subpopulations, and over the life course. Her current work includes an investigation of the emotional, physical, and behavioral well-being of children and adolescents living in stepfamilies. |
| Shelley E. Taylor - Psychology Until recently, the biosocial mechanisms underlying human affiliative responses to stress have remained largely unknown. Our previous research suggests that oxytocin and endogenous opioid peptides are implicated in these responses, especially in women. Our current research assesses whether oxytocin acts roughly as a social thermostat that is responsive to adequacy of social resources, that prompts affiliative behavior if those resources fall below an adequate level, and that reduces biological and psychological stress responses, once positive social contacts are reestablished. |
| M. Belinda Tucker - Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Center for Culture and Health My research program has several goals: 1) to understand the changing character, role, and functions (social and psychological) of family in this society generally, and how they may be differentially experienced by distinct cultural groupings, 2) to understand the roots of such changes and their impact on communities and individuals, 3) to understand the role of race/ethnicity in the formation and course of couple relationships (e.g., inter-ethnic), and 4) to examine the link between close personal relationships and psychological well-being. |
| Susan Watkins - California Center for Population Research; Institute for Social Science Research I direct an ongoing project on the role of social networks in responses to the AIDS epidemic in rural Malawi. The study focuses on relationships of network partners, but includes family relationships as well. |
| Thomas S. Weisner - Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences (Semel Institute, Center for Culture and Health); Anthropology Thomas S. Weisner is Prof. of Anthropology, Departments of Psychiatry (NPI Center for Culture and Health) and Anthropology at UCLA. His research interests are culture and human development, and in medical, psychological and cultural studies of families and children at risk. He is director of the Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Laboratory in the Mental Retardation Research Center at UCLA. With Greg Duncan, Aletha Huston and others, he is currently studying impacts on children and families of changes in welfare and family supports, based on a longitudinal study over 8 years of a random-assignment experimental support program for working-poor parents. He also directs a longitudinal study of families with children with development disabilities, and is collaborating in a random-assignment, experimental mixed-method study of the impacts of early literacy interventions for Head Start programs (with Chris Lonigan and JoAnn Farver). He has done field research in Western Kenya on sibling caretaking of children, and on the long-term consequences of urban migration for children and families, as well as studies of sibling caretaking and school competence among Native Hawaiians (with Ronald Gallimore). Weisner has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a member of the MacArthur Foundation research network on successful pathways in middle childhood, is currently President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, and is a Senior Program Advisor to the WT Grant Foundation. He is the editor of Making it work: Low-wage employment, family life and child development (with Hiro Yoshikawa & Edward Lowe), 2006, Discovering successful pathways in children's development: New methods in the study of childhood and family life, 2005; and African families and the crisis of social change (with Candice Bradley and Phil Kilbride), 1997. |
| Jeffrey J. Wood - Education Professor Wood studies linkages among parent-child relationships, children's friendship patterns, and emotional adjustment in elementary school and preschool children. A particular emphasis has been the effect of intrusive parenting practices on children's ability to regulate anxiety. He uses both experimental and naturalistic research designs as well as mixed methods including direct observation and in-depth interviews. |
| Yunxiang Yan - Anthropology I am interested in how people relate to one another in both private and public contexts and I have conducted research on marriage, kinship, friendship, and social networks in rural China. |
