Personality and Social Behavior Research Team 

Principal Investigator: 

Lauri A. Jensen-Campbell

Current Graduate Students:  Jen Knack, MS (lab manager), Madeline Rex-Lear, Marc Gomez, Haylie Gomez, Marie Ramirez, Nikki Bryant

Current Honors Thesis Students:  Linda Batto

Recent Graduates:  Katie Gleason (PhD), Kenya Malcolm (MS), Sarah Chan (MS), Amy Waldrip (PhD), Jennifer Knack (MS)

The research conducted in the Personality and Social Behavior Center reflects a Lewinian tradition. In other words, we focus on how the person and the environment interact to produce social behavior.  We view individual differences at part of a larger interdependent system.  The research interests in our lab fall at the boundary of social, developmental, and personality psychology.  In addition, students are trained to collect psychophysiological measurements (e.g., EEG, ERP, EMG).   Some of our research also includes fMRI technology. The research specifically focuses on individual differences and the ways in which they might moderate social behavior, in children, adolescents, and young adults.

During the past decade, Dr. Jensen-Campbell has focused on how agreeableness, a dimension in the five-factor model of personality, influences social behavior and developmental outcomes.  In recent or ongoing research, we have also examined individual differences in empathic accuracy, narcissism, conscientiousness, and friendship quality. 

Our program of research has also focused on understanding the development of effortful control.   We are examining the developmental connection between early appearing processes of EC and subsequent personality structure in children, adolescents, and adults. Specifically, the research is focusing on how EC indexes the common developmental process underlying two of the major dimensions in Big Five structural model of personality, namely Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation. 

Our current program of research is focusing on the influence of social pain (pain caused by the disruption of interpersonal relationships) on psychological and physical health.  We are examining how the influence of reliving social pain not only on experiencing pain, but also on one’s ability to self-regulate.  We are also examining how  personality might moderate sensitivity to social pain, namely exclusion.   Third, we are also examining the overlap in neural systems between social and physical pain.  We are specifically interested in how chronic pain influences reaction to future pain episodes (both social and physical).  Fourth, we are looking at a special type of social pain, obesity stigmatization, and its potential influence on overweight individual's psychological health.  Finally, we are looking at the mechanisms responsible for the long-term influence of chronic peer victimization on adjustment.   

If you are interested in joining the research team, please contact Dr. Lauri A. Jensen-Campbell

Current Research Projects:

The Impact of Chronic Social Pain on Adult Adjustment

The Influence of Reliving Social Pain on Self-Control

Obesity Stigmatization in Childhood:  Are Children Weight Blind?

Tympanic Membrane Asymmetry as a Predictor of Personality

The Influence of Chronic Victimization on Cortisol Sensitivity