Personality, Health, and Development Lab

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 2026 admission. If interested in working in the PHaD lab, contact Dr. Turiano at naturiano@mail.wvu.edu 

Nestled in the beautiful mountains of Morgantown, West Virginia University is home to the PHaD lab. Research in the lab centers on:

• understanding the connection between personality traits and life outcomes such as mental health, disability, chronic disease incidence, allostatic load, and even mortality risk. 

• identifying the mechanisms that connect personality traits to health outcomes. In other words, why are personality traits leading to either health benefits or detriments? Our work has found that health behaviors, such as substance abuse, sleep, and physical activity, explain part of the reason why personality predicts lifespan health. However, physiological arousal also plays an important role in the personality-health process. 

• exploring the impact that childhood adversity has on life-long development. Our lab seeks to identify the best ways to measure early life adversity so that we can understand how different types of adversity impact different processes. We find that early life adversity impacts sexual risk taking and substance use during the transition to college. We also have longer term evidence that early life events impact stress and immune physiology, cognition, and even mortality risk. 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. 

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 the College Student Transition Study. Explore more of our current research projects to find out more about the exciting research being done in our lab!