Research Themes
The Department of Psychology at Wake Forest University organizes its research around three broad themes: Self-Regulation, the Science of Well-Being, and Analysis & Measurement. These themes reflect key areas of strength within the department, and highlight the breadth of the department’s expertise.
Self-regulation is the process by which individuals monitor and control their attention, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to achieve goals and adapt to changing circumstances. It plays a fundamental role in decision making, information processing, emotion regulation, goal pursuit, and impulse control, and impacts well-being and success. We study self-regulation from multiple perspectives, examining its role in interpersonal behavior, how it varies across individuals, and the factors that shape its development across the life-span, how it can facilitate personal change, and its constituent cognitive processes and brain mechanisms. By integrating these diverse approaches, we aim to better understand how self-regulation operates, why it sometimes fails, how it can be improved, and how it can promote health, success, and a fulfilling social life.
Our well-being theme explores what it means to live a good life and thrive as individuals and communities, recognizing cultural differences in what it means to live a good life. It encompasses emotional experiences such as happiness, contentment, life satisfaction, self-esteem, relational harmony, identity and belonging, a sense of meaning and purpose, and other indicators of personal and collective growth. Our research further considers the importance of thriving relationships, financial and physical security, adaptive responses in the wake of adversity, and character traits including wisdom and morality. We also examine well-being within communities, institutions, and social structures, emphasizing that it extends beyond clinical or health indicators. We note that no single measure can fully capture well-being; instead, we aim to understand how various factors shape well-being within or across individuals and communities.
The Analysis and Measurement (A&M) theme focuses on developing, evaluating, and refining methodologies and measurement approaches that advance research in psychological and behavioral sciences. A&M prioritizes the creation, evaluation, or refinement of approaches rather than merely the application of existing techniques. Researchers in this area may contribute to statistical modeling, psychometrics, research design, approaches for improving estimation and inference, and tools for implementing and communicating these advances. An overarching goal of A&M research is to match hypotheses to the quantitative and qualitative means for testing them, which often necessitates the development and refinement of new measurement tools and analytic techniques.
A non-exhaustive list of examples of research activities in which A&M members are engaged is given here:
- Statistical modeling: latent variable modeling, structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, mixture modeling.
- Psychometrics and measurement: Classical test theory, item response theory, novel methods for evaluating validity and reliability, scale development.
- Research design: Power analysis, qualitative research study design.
- Estimation and inference: Missing data methods, Bayesian estimation, causal inference.
- Communication and dissemination of A&M advances: R package development, graphical data analysis, data processing pipelines.
A&M encompasses both theoretical and applied aspects of measurement, including the development, validation, and implementation of psychological and behavioral assessments. A&M research advances tools for assessment, estimation, inference, and validation to ensure that psychological and behavioral measures are accurate, interpretable, and replicable across diverse populations and study designs. A&M researchers take a multidisciplinary approach, with the broad goal of developing and enhancing quantitative and qualitative psychological and behavioral measurements in multiple fields. By integrating innovations in statistical methodology, measurement science, and rigorous qualitative inquiry, this work strengthens the validity, reliability, generalizability, and impact of psychological and behavioral research.