Projects

Current research topics that we are working on include:

• Behavioral, Physiological, and Neural Response to Social Exclusion in Psychopathology with Rejection Sensitivity. Rejection Sensitivity (RS) is an interpersonal dysfunction that is elevated in common mental health disorders including Social Anxiety Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder. RS can involve the interpretation of neutral or ambiguous social signals as rejecting, and the reaction to socially excluding events with intense negative emotions. Moreover, RS can be assessed in several ways. This project aims to advance our understanding of the dimensions and methods to assess RS, and how RS is differentially manifested in psychopathology at behavioral, neural, and physiological levels. This knowledge promises to improve our neurobiological understanding of RS, and how to treat mental health disorders with elevated RS.
• The Development of a Face Morphing Task to Assess Self-Other Differentiation. The development and validation of a facial morphing task to asses self-other differentiation (SOD), a clinically known phenomenon within patients with borderline personality disorder. The aim is to identify the early processing neurological markers as well as identify the link with related mechanisms including psychopathology, emotion regulation, and personality organization.
• Rejection Sensitivity as a Predictor of Marijuana Use, Cravings, and Motives in College-Aged Adults: A Translational and Ecological Momentary Assessment Approach. A Social Marijuana Study investigating the relationship between rejection sensitivity in regular marijuana users using moderately or heavily, compared to healthy young adults, on their reactions to being socially excluded. This study uses an experimental paradigm and ecological momentary assessments.
• Narcissism and Empathy. A study dedicated to better understand how narcissistic traits are related to the ability to share and understand the feelings of others, how well one regulates their emotions, how well one can label their emotions, self-esteem, and to develop a way to measure everyday sadism, defined as the tendency to derive pleasure from inflicting pain on others.