Silver Stress and Coping Lab

Past and Ongoing Research Projects

Collective Traumas

  • COVID-19 and Ongoing Collective Traumas: Please see https://sites.uci.edu/covid19/ for more information on our ongoing research on collective traumas across the United States and abroad (e.g., Ukraine war, war in Israel and Gaza).
  • Repeated Exposure to Cascading Disasters: Please see https://cascadinghazards.com/ for more information on our ongoing research examining the mental health consequences of living in a community repeatedly exposed to wildfires and other cascading hazards.
  • Lab Studies of Media Exposure to Collective Traumas: We use an experimental approach to examine the impact of media coverage of collective traumas on viewers. To that end, we are collecting data across several modalities, including online surveys, in-lab questionnaires, electrodermal activity (also referred to as galvanic skin response), and daily diary follow-ups.
  • Boston Marathon Bombings: We used a prospective longitudinal method to investigate the role of early psychological and social processes, cumulative lifetime stress, and direct or indirect (via the media) exposure to trauma in individual differences in mental and physical health outcomes after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent traumatic events (e.g., the 2015 Ebola Outbreak, 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, FL) in a representative national sample of Americans.
  • Hurricanes in the U.S. Gulf Coast: We utilized a mixed-methods approach to study psychological responses to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Michael among residents of Texas, Florida, and New York Metro. We gathered data from longitudinal panel surveys, physical parameters (e.g., storm surge), social media (e.g., Twitter), traditional media (e.g., local television channels), and online media (e.g., the National Weather Service) for analyses to identify the roles of these various factors in residents’ psychological and behavioral responses to these and subsequent hurricanes.

Trauma and Social Identity

  • Mass Casualty Events (Pulse Nightclub Massacre, Seoul Crowd Crush, Lunar New Year Shooting): We are investigating how sharing social identities with victims of mass casualty events might be a risk factor for acute stress in their aftermath. In addition, we are examining how sharing social identities with victims of traumatic events may lead individuals to engage with more event-related media, an endeavor that may be linked with increased acute stress after the event.
  • Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings: We evaluated the impact of the Ford-Kavanaugh congressional hearings on mental health. Particularly, we examined the psychological effect of the hearings on those with a prior history of sexual or interpersonal violence, and we examined different ways that Democrats and Republicans responded to the hearings.

Other Projects

  • Other current projects explore the role of temporal distortions in short- and long-term coping with trauma and the relationship between social sharing of trauma and mental health.