Broadly, my interdisciplinary, multi-method research program seeks to understand physiological, cognitive, and affective processes in stressful romantic relationship contexts. That is, I examine how responses to stressors (both internal and external to the relationship) influence downstream cardiovascular health outcomes, cognitive outcomes, and how affective processes unfold between couples and across time. Moreover, I use dyadic data analytic techniques (i.e., multi-level modelling) to study the dyadic nature of stress in relationships.

To study stress in romantic relationships, I use multiple methods, including cardiovascular and neuroendocrine physiological measures, and rely on the organizing frameworks provided by the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat, attachment, and the extended process model of emotion regulation. I am also a strong proponent of “immersive” paradigms to study relationship processes. That is, to study how stress unfolds in romantic relationships, couples should be made to experience the stress of interest in the lab setting.