Psychosocial processes in risk for depression including vulnerable self-esteem, rumination, and overgeneral autobiographical memory
I am broadly interested in the role of psychosocial factors in the etiology, maintenance and recovery from depression, as well as how depressive conditions impact people’s lives in terms of health-related behavior (such as treatment adherence among HIV+ patients) and social rejection. A number of my past research projects have examined how labile self-esteem, insecure attachment style, and ruminative coping contribute to risk for depression. Recent studies have focused on implicit self-esteem, biases in interpersonal perception, deficits in executive control and autobiographical memory. My lab is also developing procedures to assess how rumination is experienced in daily life and examining contextual factors that may signal when repetitive thinking about one’s mood is maladaptive.