PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY & NEUROSCIENCE
DIRECTOR, EASIR LAB
DIRECTOR, THE LOVE CONSORTIUM
COLLABORATIONS
Recent Lab Photos
EASIR Lab members (re)united at The Love Consortium Love Conference in Durham, NC (Sept 28-30, 2022). Left to right: Dr. Brian Don, Dr. Tatum Jolink, Zoe Hansen, Alexis Cameron, Kylie Chandler, Emily Le, Dr. Sara Algoe, Jieni Zhou, Dr. Brett Murphy
EASIR Lab members, Fall 2019. Left to right: Dr. Brian Don, Dr. Brett Murphy, Dr. Emily Hooker, Dr. Tatum Jolink, Dr. Sara Algoe, Ayana Younge, Jieni Zhou, Kylie Chandler
Current Lab Members
Postdoctoral Fellow
Brett Murphy is interested in empathy, love, and other positive interpersonal processes. With prior academic training in law and history, he brings a multidisciplinary perspective to his psychological research.
Graduate Student
Kylie conducts research on the topics of close relationship initiation and maintenance, and investigates questions about how individuals regulate their behavior in order to meet their relationship-relevant goals. In particular, she often employs experiments to study the behaviors resulting from commitment in romantic relationships.
Zoe Hansen
Graduate Student
Zoe is interested in how societal structure relates to social wellness. She employs an interdisciplinary perspective to consider the role that societal structure and culture have in shaping norms and beliefs. She uses this framework to examine how one's life experiences affect the way that they navigate their social world, with a particular focus on nonverbal behavior.
Graduate Student
Jieni Zhou is interested in understanding conducive factors that lead to moments of co-experienced positive emotions in people' daily interactions with both strong and weak ties and the downstream relational consequences of such moments. To investigate these questions, Jieni Zhou used primarily behavioral coding and self-report measures.
Issay Barry
Research Staff
Issay is interested in social interactions and social perceptions. More specifically, he is interested in how social interactions and perceptions are influenced by implicit and explicit biases. He is also interested in how culture can influence the way we view our relationships and the people around us.
Emily Le
Research Staff
Emily is interested in the role of relationships in emotion regulation. More specifically, she is interested in how reaching out to specific others in our social networks for emotion-specific regulation contributes to effective emotion regulation and benefits well-being.
Alexis Cameron
Research Collaborator
Alexis is interested in understanding emotional and physiological responses to information about racial discrimination and how it relates to social support seeking behavior and engagement in collective action.
Recent Lab Alumni
Dr. Emily D. Hooker examines the link between social class, close relationships, and ensuing physiological and psychological outcomes.
Dr. Tatum Jolink is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan. She received her PhD in Social Psychology with a Quantitative Psychology Concentration from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023. Tatum studies positive adaptive behaviors that help to initiate and strengthen close relationships (e.g., affectionate touch, shared laughter, sex) and how the body contributes to and is affected by those relationships (e.g., the immune system, sleep processes).
Ongoing Grants
A Scientific Approach to Living in Love: A Framework for the Future
This grant supports new research in Dr. Algoe's lab as well as the development of The Love Consortium.
The Love Consortium aspires to collaboratively leverage data to accelerate scientific understanding of human connection.
First Year and Beyond (FAB) Study – some of our FABulous RAs! (From left to right.) Top stair: Kylie Chandler, Tatum Jolink, Abigail Smits, Alexis Cameron, Dr. Sara Algoe; Middle stair: Emily Le, Ali Marx, Alicia Spencer, Zoe Hansen, Emily Allis; Lower stair: Eden Dunn, Claire Nolan, Mansi Agrawal, Isa Colon
FAB Study lead team, Wave I, May 2022 conference. From left to right: Tatum Jolink, Zoe Hansen, Dr. Sara Algoe, Kylie Chandler, Dr. Emily Hooker, Emily Le
FAB Study lead team, Wave II, October, 2022. (From left to right.) Top stair: Kylie Chandler; Middle stair: Tatum Jolink and Alexis Cameron; Lower stair: Emily Le and Zoe Hansen
Validation And Unification Of Love Measurement
This grant supports new research in Dr. Algoe's lab for the development of a measure of "love in the moment".
Uncovering The Cognitive And Cultural Foundations Of Gratitude
-Led by Michael McCullough, UCSD- Department of Psychology
Completed Grants
Good Citizenship, and the Spread of Altruism
-With Christopher Oveis, UCSD- Rady School of Management
February 2016 Grant Team Data Blitz. Left to right: Yen-Ping Chang, Patrick Dwyer, Ayana Younge, Rainy Gu, Joseph Ocampo, Sara Algoe, Christopher Oveis
Picture This! Framing Purpose and Bringing Gratitude into Focus
-With Laura McKee, Georgia State University
This intervention seeks to increase gratitude in 9th graders through the use of digital picture-taking, sharing, and savoring. This study combines positive psychology (gratitude) with cognitive bias modification to foster student growth.