The Self, Emotion, and Behavior Laboratory focuses on topics related to self-reflection, social motives, emotions, and interpersonal behavior. Our current research projects involve six areas:

1. Egoic Overreactions to Inconsequential Events

People often react strongly to events that pose no tangible threat whatsoever and overreact to minor events with excessive anger and force that far exceed the necessary response. For example, people may experience uncontrollable rage in response to another driver’s mildly annoying behavior, become extremely angry during “friendly” discussions in which the outcome of the debate has no real consequences, react defensively to meaningless criticisms, or overreact to minor frustrations. Importantly, these kinds of overreactions underlie a great deal of interpersonal conflict, aggression, and suffering, including road rage, domestic violence and child abuse (for minor infractions or failure to fulfill minor obligations), anger in response to differences of opinion, aggressive reactions to humiliation, culture-of-honor violence, and extreme collective reactions to inconsequential slights against one’s national, ethnic, or religious group. What these situations have in common is that the precipitating event is of little or no real importance, yet people respond as if they are facing an immense, tangible threat to their well-being We are currently conducting studies to understand the processes involved when people respond strongly to events that do not constitute an actual threat to their well-being or, when the event does have a potentially negative consequence for them, respond far out of proportion to the severity of the precipitating event.

2. Self-compassion

For many years psychologists have stressed the importance of self-esteem in dealing with negative life events, but recent research by our lab and others suggests that self-compassion may be more important than self-esteem in helping people to cope. Self-compassion involves treating oneself compassionately in the face of loss, failure, and other negative events, much like we would treat loved ones who experienced similar difficulties. We have conducted a number of studies to look at the psychological processes involved in self-compassion, the effects of self-compassion on well-being, and the ways in which self-compassion differs from self-esteem. We are now extending this research to understand how self-compassion may help the elderly cope with aging.

3. Belonging and Interpersonal Rejection

People possess a fundamental motivation to develop and maintain social bonds with other people, and this motive underlies a great deal of interpersonal behavior. We have been interested for several years in people’s concerns with others’ evaluations and acceptance of them, and with how people respond when they are concerned about interpersonal rejection. We have studied emotional reactions to rejection-related concerns (e.g., social anxiety, hurt feelings, embarrassment), the role of self-esteem in monitoring relational value, the tactics people use to buttress flagging acceptance, the link between rejection and aggression, and individual differences that moderate reactions to rejection-related events. We are currently studying people's use of "social windows of opportunity" when they enter new interpersonal environments, such as going to college for the first time.

4. Self-Presentation

Although I have been interested in self-presentation for many years, we have not conducted research in this area for some time. We have recently started a set of new studies of what we are calling "self-presentational persona" -- the distinct images that people portray to different audiences. Some people come across pretty much the same in all situations, whereas others have rather different identities. Our current focus is on why different people have different numbers of persona and whether using many personae is associated with lower or higher social success and mental health. We are also studying the use of self-presentational strategies in cyberspace.

5. Expressions of Affection and Romance

Although social psychologists know a great deal about why people become attracted to one another, we know relatively little about how and why people convey their feelings of attraction and love to one another in particular ways. We are currently studying the tactical use of "romantic" actions, and how romantic behaviors differ from other expressions of affection and love. Why, for example, do some people go overboard in expressing their feelings in an inflated, hyperbolic, and unrealistic fashion ("I'd walk a million miles through the scorching desert to be with you" -- yeah, right....)? We have several projects underway to understand how and why people express their love in romantic and nonromatic ways.

6. Hyper-egoic and Hypo-egoic Self-regulation

Many perspectives in American psychology have assumed that people fare best in life when they maintain a high level of self-awareness, individuate themselves from other people, and maintain a positive, if not enhanced self-image. Furthermore, self-regulation is typically conceptualized as a conscious, intentional effort to control one’s thoughts, emotions, or behaviors. As a result, most theorists have emphasized that people who wish to control or change their behavior must pay close conscious attention to their behavior and exert deliberate, willful control over it. However, research also suggests that an active, individuated, and enhancing self creates a number of problems. We are investigating the conditions under which self-reflection has positive vs. negative effects on thought, emotion, and behavior, and on cognitive perspectives that help to reign in an overactive self when a hypo-egoic orientation would be beneficial. Along these lines, we have been studying self-compassion, mindfulness, and other hypo-egoic states. The goal of our research is to examine occasions on which people relinquish deliberate, conscious control over their own behavior so that they will respond more naturally, spontaneously, or automatically.

Research Facilities

Much of our research is conducted in the laboratory facility of the Duke Interdisciplinary Initiative in Social Psychology (DISSP). The DIISP Laboratory was constructed in 2004 as a state-of-the-art facility for experimental social and behavioral science research. The lab is equipped with:

• Two large computer/questionnaire labs (one 10 person, one 16 person) with networked desktop systems running Windows XP on CRT monitors. Desktops are separated by removable partitions.
• Twelve acoustically sealed cubicles (10 one person, 2 two person) with networked desktop systems running Windows XP on CRT monitors. Millisecond keyboards are installed for improved reaction time measurement.
• Four audio-video recording rooms (two 1-2 person, two 1-6 person) with high quality cameras and microphones (both visible and clandestine). Psychophysiology measures can also be deployed in these rooms enabling simultaneous recoding of video and physiology for individuals or dyads.
• Two psychophysiology recording rooms equipped for the measurement of galvanic skin response, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, EMG, ECG, respiration and finger pulse amplitude.
• A 20-person seminar-style room with data projector and multiple format AV capability (DVD, VHS, PC).