Using Dyadic Intensive Longitudinal Methods to Study Everyday Health-Related Processes

The use of Intensive Longitudinal Methods (ILMs) has grown exponentially in the behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences over the past 30 years. This class of research paradigms is used to study everyday psychological experience in its natural context (a.k.a “studying life as it is lived”). In this talk, J-P Laurenceau will review some of the work he has done using ILMs to study how certain dyadic processes unfold in everyday life. He will draw primarily from two distinct but related lines of work reflecting how patient-partner couples cope with breast cancer and with type 2 diabetes. He will conclude by touching on future directions that will attempt to capitalize upon some of the unique methodological expertise of Michigan’s ISR researchers. 

Jean-Philippe Laurenceau, Ph.D. (B.A. 1992 Cornell; Ph.D. 1999 Penn State) is the Unidel A. Gilchrist Sparks III Chair in the Social Sciences and Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware where he teaches courses on methodology and applied data analysis as well as intimate relationships. J-P uses Intensive Longitudinal Methods to study individual and dyadic processes related to intimacy and health. He is an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology and fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. J-P is co-author with Niall Bolger of the book Intensive Longitudinal Methods: An Introduction to Diary and Experience Sampling Research (Guilford Press). For further details, please see his academic web page.

Richard Gonzalez hosts.

Throughout its history, autism has been conceptualized as a mostly male condition. Although gender/sex differences in autism diagnosis are shrinking, public recognition of this shift may be lagging for various reasons. For example, even today, the rare media depictions of autistic adults (many are of autistic children and adolescents, usually boys) disproportionately focus on autistic men. Insofar as these depictions inform societal impressions, a masculinization hypothesis suggests that both autistic men and autistic women may be construed as having more masculine qualities than their non-autistic counterparts. In this talk, Andrew Todd will report findings from a new and ongoing line of research that are better accommodated by an alternative de-gendering hypothesis: In multiple experiments using a combination of direct and indirect methodological approaches, autistic adults were construed as having fewer gender-consistent traits than neurotypical and neurotype-unspecified adults. Furthermore, this de-gendering pattern had downstream implications that align with dehumanizing experiences commonly reported by autistic adults—that they’re viewed by others both as machine-like (i.e., mechanistic dehumanization) and as more childlike (i.e., infantilization) than their chronological age dictates. These mechanized and infantilized impressions of autistic women and men, which were not fully reducible to general negativity toward autism specifically or toward neurodivergence or disability more broadly, were evident (albeit more weakly) even among autistic participants.

Andrew Todd (BA, Michigan State; MS & PhD, Northwestern) is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Much of his research falls into two general themes: (1) antecedents and consequences of perspective taking and mental-state reasoning, and (2) mental representations of people with different combinations of social identities.

Allison Earl hosts.

Racial discrimination continues to have profound and lasting effects on the mental health of Black individuals. Perseverative coping or the chronic and continuous contemplation about symptoms, causes, and consequences of distress represents an important, yet under-explored mechanism that may explain and exacerbate the deleterious consequences of racial discrimination. Drawing from recent and forthcoming work from Dr. Bernard, this presentation will highlight how perseverative coping can influence the discrimination-mental health link among Black youth and emerging adults. Additionally, this presentation will discuss the value of considering perseverative coping as a culturally relevant, malleable intervention target that can reduce negative mental health sequalae in the aftermath of racism-related experiences.

Dr. Donte Bernard’s program of research examines the direct and indirect pathways by which racism compromises the mental and behavioral health and well-being of Black children, adolescents, and emerging adults. Anchored by cultural ecological models recognizing the importance of risk and resilience at the individual and contextual level, his research leverages both quantitative and qualitative methods to identify how Black youth identify, cope with, and navigate racism-related experiences across sensitive developmental periods. Ultimately, the goal of his research is to eliminate racial disparities in mental and behavioral health through informing policy and intervention development targeting the reduction of racism and its related health consequences.

Myles Durkee hosts.

Dr. Bill Chopik (he/his/him) joins us at the University of Michigan March 31, 3025, for a talk co-sponsored by the Research Center for Group Dynamics and the Katz-Newcomb Colloquium Series: “Optimism and health: Resource or delusion?”

Does it always help to look on the bright side of life and a situation? Years of individual difference and lifespan development research have framed optimism—the tendency to expect positive things in the future—as an asset that protects against physical and cognitive decline. There is also an assumption that optimism is a purely individual resource, originating from people alone, irrespective of their environments. In this talk, Chopik will revisit these approaches and provide some evidence that people are optimistic even when they shouldn’t be, how the optimism of other people affects us, and how where you live might alter how you think about the future. The goal of this session is to give you a crash course on optimism and where it comes from—topics that expand our understanding of health and resilience and should be of interest to everyone, even if you’re a pessimist at heart.

Dr. Chopik is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University. He studies how close relationships—and the people in them—change over time and across situations. Dr. Chopik’s work examines phenomena as broad as how relationships and social institutions shape development and as focused as the mechanisms that underlie the link between close relationships and health. In 2017, Dr. Chopik was recognized as one of Forbes Magazine’s Top 30 Scientists Under 30 and has since been recognized as a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science.

David Dunning, organizer of the Katz-Newcomb speaker series in Psychology and an associate of the Research Center for Group Dynamics, hosts. RCGD’s winter 2025 seminar series covers a variety of topics in social science, including social cognition, structural racism, romantic relationships, and cognitive health. Check the schedule for updates to this series that will convene on select Mondays at 3:30 at the Institute for Social Research, Room 1430.

As permissions allow, seminars are later posted to the RCGD YouTube playlist.

Courtney Thomas Tobin will speak on April 7, 2025, on a topic related to cognitive aging in older Black Americans. The title and abstract are TBA.

DeAnnah Byrd is an assistant professor at ASU studying the effects of risk (chronic conditions, biological and psychosocial stressors) and protective (coping, social support, etc) factors on memory and cognitive changes in older African Americans. Byrd’s research aims to improve cognitive outcomes for African Americans. Her RCGD talk will be on April 14, 2025. The title and abstract are TBA.