About This Project
We're interested in how roommate relationships can shape emotions, behavior, and mental health. Questions we would like to answer include: 1) To what extent do roommates influence and help manage each other's emotions? 2) Are ways of managing emotions like rumination or acceptance "contagious" between roommates? 3) If one roommate is depressed, is the other more likely to become depressed as well?Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
Do you ever wonder “Why do I react this way?” or rehash a problem over and over again in your mind? If so, you are engaging in rumination. Rumination is not the most adaptive way to manage your emotions – it’s strongly associated with psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety.
Rumination might even be contagious! In a study of freshman roommates, when one roommate used rumination, the other roommate was more likely to begin using this strategy as well (Haeffel & Hames, 2014). No research to date, however, has examined how other, more adaptive strategies, such as accepting or reappraising emotions, may also be contagious.
That's where we come in. We are hoping to learn more about how relationships influence the contagion of adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies.
What is the significance of this project?
The first year of college is a difficult transition and a time when many students experience their first episodes of depression. A 2011 study called the American College Health Association–National College Health Assessment found that 30% of college students experienced a period of impairment resulting from depressive symptoms. Depression is a serious illness that affects many people and costs our society 34 billion dollars a year in direct and indirect costs. It is also a major risk factor for attempted and completed suicide.
Identifying the factors that may influence the development of depression is essential to developing better techniques for preventing and treating this debilitaitng disorder. In this study, we will be examining rumination and interpersonal relationships
What are the goals of the project?
We will use these funds to follow a cohort of freshmen over the course of their first year. We will repeatedly assess: 1) their emotional experiences, 2) their adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, including acceptance and rumination, 3) their symptoms of depression/anxiety, and 4) their relationship with their roommate.
By recruiting roommate pairs, we will be able to assess the impact that living with an unknown person can have on one's emotional and mental health. The repeated assessments will let us model changes over the course of time, as the roommate relationship evolves.
Projects like this may help us identify how we can best prevent and treat mental health problems in young people transitioning to college.
Budget
We hope that this study will be the first step towards a series of projects examining how interpersonal relationships impact emotion regulation and mood - for better or worse.
We will use these funds to pay study participants. Longitudinal studies like this often experience attrition, that is, participant drop-out. Even the most well-meaning participants may find that their time is limited and fail to complete all of the assessments. This is problematic because when participants don't fully complete a study, we are left with incomplete data sets and our results become less reliable.
One way we usually try to minimize attrition is through financial incentives. Each participant will be compensated approximately $100 for completing the study.
Meet the Team
Team Bio
Dr. Amelia Aldao has been researching emotions and how people regulate them for over 10 years. She obtained her Ph.D. from Yale University, where she trained with the late Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, who was a pioneer in the study of rumination and depression. She is now the director of the Psychopathology & Affective Sciences Lab at The Ohio State University, where we conduct experiments to study how people experience emotions and how they regulate them.Kara Christensen is a graduate student in clinical psychology interested in studying interpersonal relationships. She graduated from The University of Chicago in 2011 and worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston from 2011-2013.
Outside of research, Dr. Aldao enjoys blogging about psychology. Kara likes to play with her dog, Bea.
(Photo: L: Dr. Amelia Aldao, R: Kara Christensen))
Amelia Aldao
I am an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at The Ohio State University. I study how people experience and regulate their emotions and how these processes, in turn, lead to the development and maintenance of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression. I am the Director of the Psychopathology & Affective Sciences lab, where we create emotional challenges, in order to identify mechanisms underlying patterns of adaptive and maladaptive emotional functioning.
Kara Christensen
I originally hail from Charleston, SC. I graduated from the University of Chicago in 2011 with a concentration in psychology and a minor in French (but don't ask me to speak French!). In college, I did research on psychophysiology in women with bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and anorexia nervosa at the Adult Eating and Weight Disorders Clinic under Dr. Eunice Chen. Afterwards, I worked for two years at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA with Dr. Laura Holsen and Dr. Jill Goldstein coordinating a research study examining neural responses to food in women with depression and obesity.
I am currently a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at the Ohio State University at the Psychopathology and Affective Sciences (PAS) Lab with Dr. Amelia Aldao. I am very interested in interpersonal relationships, particularly in how we rely on others to help us manage our emotions and how we in turn provide social support. I am also interested in understanding the role that humor plays in helping us manage our emotions.
In my free time, I like running and playing with my Boston Terrier, Bea. She is a handful!
Lab Notes
Nothing posted yet.
Press and Media
Learn more about emotion regulation at Dr. Aldao's blog Psychology Today.Dr. Aldao was quoted in Slate Magazine talking about emotion regulation and sentimentality.
Kara's Introduction to Psychology class was featured on MTV News.
Visit our lab website to find out about other projects we're working on. You can also follow Dr. Aldao on Twitter (@DrAmeliaAldao)
Check out papers we've published:
Dr. Amelia Aldao's Google Scholar
Kara Christensen's Google Scholar
Additional Information
Banner image courtesy of h.koppdelaney on Flickr.com, Creative Commons licensedProject Backers
- 15Backers
- 14%Funded
- $335Total Donations
- $22.33Average Donation