Personality, Health, and Development Lab

Nestled in the beautiful mountains of Morgantown, the PHaD Lab is directed by Nicholas A. Turiano, Associate Professor of Life Span Developmental Psychology at West Virginia University. Dr. Turiano will be accepting applications from potential graduate students for Fall 2027 admission. If interested in working in the PHaD lab, contact Dr. Turiano at naturiano@mail.wvu.edu 

PHaD Lab Mission: My mission is to prepare the next generation of developmental scientists through outstanding mentorship, rigorous training, and collaborative discovery. The lab helps students cultivate a passion for research and teaching while developing expertise in cutting-edge psychological science, longitudinal research methodology, and advanced quantitative techniques to address critical questions in lifespan development. Beyond research, the lab fosters the professional skills, leadership, and communication abilities that enable trainees to excel in academia, higher education, consulting, industry, and other data-driven careers. 

PHaD Lab Research: To conduct our developmental research, the PHaD lab utilizes population-based data from several longitudinal national studies, such as the Midlife Development in the U.S. (MIDUS) study. We also engage in primary data collection via Prolific and local cohort studies, such as the College Student Transition Study. Explore more about our current research projects!

Personality-Health Mechanisms

Understanding the mechanisms that connect personality traits to health outcomes is a key area of interest in the PHaD lab. In other words, why are personality traits leading to either health benefits or detriments? Our work focuses on health behaviors (substance abuse, sleep, and physical activity) and physiological processes (cardiovscular, metabloic, endocrine, and immune function) as part of the reason why personality predicts lifespan health. However, physiological arousal also plays an important role in the personality-health process. 

Adjustment to College 

The PHaD lab has collected multiple cohorts of longitudinal data from college students during their freshman year transition to identify both risk and protective factors associated with academic outcomes (GPA, drop-out), mental health, substance abuse, and other risky behaviors. The goal of this work is to inform prevention and treatment programs offered to at-risk students during the initial transotion to college. 

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Development 

Dr. Turiano is current co-directing the development of a university-wide Center that focuses on how childhood adversity impacts life-long development. Our lab seeks to identify the best ways to measure early life adversity so that we can understand how specific types of adversity impact different health and behavioral processes. Even though early life experiences can shape later development -- albeit mostly for the worse -- our lab also seeks to identify individuals who appear "resilient" to the negative effects of early life adversity. Such research will provide the evidence needed for effective interventions to combat the deleterious effects of early life adversity. Click here for an overview of our current research on adversity, and also check out the work being done through the Translational Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resilience (TRACER).