Clinical/Community Division

Dr. Verona's research interests lie broadly in the area of emotion and externalizing psychopathology (antisocial behavior and aggression). The main goal is in identifying the combined influences of genes, affective responding, and stress/adversity that represent risk for the development of a constellation of syndromes, including antisocial behavior, psychopathic personality, aggression, and impulsive suicide. This interest has guided Dr. Verona's pursuit of two distinct but related areas of research. The first has involved experimental laboratory research that examines stress-induced emotional, psychophysiological, and motor-behavioral correlates of aggression. Some of this work has revealed gender and temperamental differences in aggressive responses to stress that relate to how negative emotion and physiology differentially activate approach and withdrawal behaviors across individuals. In other work, Dr. Verona has focused on using models of temperament and emotion to advance understanding of antisocial behavior and aggression and to identify subgroups of offenders. An especially novel feature of this work involves investigating the spectrum of emotional experience and expression at its two extremes in this population: 1) the classic psychopath, in whom emotional reactivity is believed to be blunted or deficient; and 2) highly antisocial individuals who may be at particular risk for affective violence and impulsive suicide, and are more likely to have a history of abuse or adversity. It is the investigation of this latter subgroup of offenders that represents the link between this work and the laboratory aggression research described above. Recent work has dealt with gender differences in the development and manifestations of these syndromes.

Representative Publications:

• Verona, E., Sadeh, N., & Curtin, J.J. (2009). Stress-induced asymmetric frontal brain activity and aggression risk. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 131-145.
• Sadeh, N., & Verona, E. (2008). Psychopathy traits and selective impairments in attentional functioning. Neuropsychology, 22, 669-680.
• Verona, E., & Sullivan, E. (2008). Catharsis and aggression revisited: Heart rate reduction following aggressive responding. Emotion, 8, 331-340.
• Verona, E., & Kilmer, A. (2007). Stress exposure and affective modulation of aggressive behavior in men and women. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 410-421.
• Verona, E., Joiner, T.E., Johnson, F., & Bender, T. (2006). Gender specific gene-environment interactions on laboratory-assessed aggression. Biological Psychology, 71, 33-41.

Classes Recently Taught:

• Undergraduate: Abnormal Psychology
• Graduate: Affective Factors in Behavior/Clinical Intervention & Ethics, Personality and Psychotherapy Practicum Course