My research focuses on decision making, risk perception, memory as well as motivational, emotional and social factors involved in processing healthcare information and subsequent intentions for health-protective behavior change. In one line of my research, I am exploring why people are resistant to change their disease-risk perception when they are given objective risk information for a disease and how emotional factors such as their chronic worry about contracting the disease and social factors such as the shared social identity with their healthcare providers affect this process. In a second line of research, I am investigating how best health recommendations for different health-protective behaviors can be combined in health messages and how these recommendations can be communicated in an autonomy-supportive way to increase people's intentions to engage in various health-protective behaviors.

Classes Recently Taught:

• PSYCH 201: Introduction to Social Psychology
• PSYCH 250: Psychology of Personality