This is a request for an ADAMHA Research Scientist Award (RSA). The long term objective of this proposal is to allow the PI to pursue social psychological research with mental health related implications on a full time basis while helping to develop the talent of younger research professionals. On the research side, flee specific aims include carrying out laboratory experiments related to self-evaluation (self-esteem) and attitudes. One series of studies seeks to study marital functioning in terms of partners' attempts to maintain own and spouse's self-evaluation. It focuses on the emotions and attributions partner's make when outperforming or being outperformed by their spouse. A related series of studies attempts to uncover what (if anything) a variety of qualitatively different self evaluation (defense) mechanisms have in common or how they might influence one another. This work may help us better understand marital and individual adjustment. The proposed attitude work ranges over the relationships of thoughts and feelings to behavior to the antecedents and correlates of ruminative thought. Ruminative thought has been implicated in depression. The current work is intended to identify the circumstances that produce rumination or stop it and the variables that affect it's content. On the generativity side, i.e., the development of younger scientific talent, the specific aims are to have the PI involved in mentoring young faculty, and working with postdocs and graduate students in a research context. The PI proposes to participate in two formal programs designed to mentor young faculty at the University of Georgia. One of these programs is intended to teach young faculty in the social sciences something about the art of developing fundable research; the other has a broad focus on instruction. Working with graduate students and postdocs will be a natural outgrowth of the active research programs proposed. The development of a video archive of outstanding social psychologists for instructional and educational purposes is also a specific aim. The PI has already begun such a program with some success.
| Tesser, A; Beach, S R (1998) Life events, relationship quality, and depression: an investigation of judgment discontinuity in vivo. J Pers Soc Psychol 74:36-52 |
