The Columbia Couples Lab

Lab members

	Prof. Niall Bolger, Ph.D. Niall Bolger is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. Currently he has three research interests. He studies adjustment processes in close relationships using intensive longitudinal diary studies and lab-based studies of dyadic behavior, emotion and physiology. He also studies personality processes as they are revealed in patterns of behavior, emotion, and physiology in daily life. Finally, he is interested in statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal and multilevel data. He teaches courses in adult relationships, research methods, and longitudinal data analysis. He is a Charter Member and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, a member of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology and of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He has served on the Social and Group Processes grant review panel of the National Institute of Mental Health and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes.
	Turu (Gertraud) Stadler, Ph.D. Turu received her Diploma in Psychology from University of Eichstatt, Germany. She completed her Ph.D. at University of Hamburg, Germany. She is currently a Postdoc working with Prof. Niall Bolger. Her overarching research question is how people change their behavior and how they maintain behavior change in the long run. She is interested in theories of behavior change, self-regulation, motivation, volition, and the influence of social relations. Naturally this goes along with her interest in the measurement of behavior with diaries and physiological indicators as well as the analysis of longitudinal data.
	Christine Paprocki, Lab Manager Christine graduated with a BA in psychology from the University of Chicago. She handles administrative responsibilities, coordinates studies, and works on her own research. Her research focuses on how couples' routine daily interactions and processes of dyadic social support influence health outcomes. She has also done work on rejection sensitivity and domestic violence. She plans to enter a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology.
	Andreas Olsson, Ph.D. He received a B.S. in Psychology and Philosophy and a M.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Lund. He then moved to NYU where he received his Ph.D. in 2006 under the mentorship of Elizabeth Phelps. He is currently a postdoc working with Kevin Ochsner, Geraldine Downey and Niall Bolger. Broadly, Andreas’s research takes a multi-method approach to studying the mechanisms underlying emotional processes as they unfold in social situations. More specifically, he is currently examining the role of empathy and mental attribution in emotional learning from others (through observation), and how emotional learning about others is related to individual characteristics of the learner.
	Abigail Scholer, Ph.D. student Her broad research interests involve issues of self-regulation and motivation – how do individuals commit to change when ambivalent? How do changes in context affect the ways in which self-regulatory strategies are implemented? She is also interested in issues of motivation related to impression formation and change in social relationships: what information are we motivated to seek about others? In what ways do our impressions of others shift over time? How are impression shifts related to changes in relationship quality?
	Alexandra Suppes, Ph.D. student Lexi received a BA in Philosophy with interdisciplinary honors through the Ethics in Society Program at Stanford University. While at Stanford, she also completed a MA in Psychology with a focus on cultural psychology under the direction of Hazel Markus. She is currently a second year in the psychology department at Columbia University. Presently, her research in dyadic communication and social identity exploits traditional methods of speech and discourse analysis to inform psychological processes.
	Jamil Zaki, Ph.D. student Jamil is a second year graduate student working in collaboration with Prof. Niall Bolger and Prof. Kevin Ochsner. He is interested in how people perceive each other's emotions, and how understanding someone else's emotion affects behavior. Currently, they are working on a project to assess the physiological and brain bases of empathic accuracy. Combining these data with an ongoing diary study, they hope to explore how people's style and ability in understanding emotions affects the way they provide support in close relationships.
	Emily Lightstone, Undergraduate Student Emily Lightstone is a junior majoring in psychology at Columbia. She is working in the Couples Lab as part of the Psychology Honors Program. She has interned with Professor Anat Ninio at Hebrew University in Jerusalem where she has looked at speech patterns in English-speaking parents. Among other things, Emily is interested in social interactions and for her Honors Thesis, she is putting together a study that examines dyadic planning in high school students. Emily hopes to pursue a PhD in psychology after she graduates and in the meantime, is looking forward to working in the Couples Lab.
	Sean Lane, Masters Student Sean is currently a Masters student in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences, but hopes to be continuing onto his PhD in Psychology next year. He completed his undergrad at Carnegie Mellon in Mathematics and Psychology. Research interests include decision-making and emotion regulation in close relationships. Upcoming collaborations include looking at the effects of support during stressful events in close relationships and the role of risk aversion and support in making decisions.