Adrienne B
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill)
Expertise
Emotions, Body Awareness, Neuroscience, Adversity, Stress, Social Psychology, Emotion Development, Experimental Design, Statistical Analysis
Bio
My name is Adrienne (she/her/hers), and I received my Ph.D. in Psychology & Neuroscience from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. I study why people differ in their experience of emotion. I'm most interested in 1) how social factors, like stress, affect the brain and body, and 2) how these experiences influence emotion. I am also interested in what people think about their bodies, and how this influences the way they experience emotions. The best part of my job is helping students turn their research ideas into reality! For fun, I like taking art classes, being outdoors, playing with my kitties (Lily and Sushi), and watching a good true crime docu-series.Project ideas
What can the brain tell us about emotion?
Understanding how the brain creates emotions can help us better why some people develop emotion-related disorders. In this project, we will dive into the world of affective neuroscience - a cross between the study of emotion and the study of the brain. Together, we can pick specific topic that interests you, from "where in the brain do emotions come from" to "how does the brain's sensitivity to rewards or punishments relate to someone's ability to regulate their behavior"? This project can be a scientific review paper, a scientific poster presentation, or even You will gain skills in writing and editing, as well as an in-depth knowledge of your chosen research topic.
How does stress “get under the skin” to affect health?
About 50% of teens in the U.S. report experiencing at least one stressful life event like bullying, exposure to neighborhood violence, or poverty. Decades of research shows that experiencing something stressful or dangerous as a child increases risk for mental and physical disorders later in life. But how? In this project, you would pick one type of stressful life experience, like poverty, and learn how it affects teens' mental or physical well-being. We can then design an experiment to test a hypothesis, write a scientific review, and/or analyze a secondary dataset available from public sources. You would learn how to formulate a research question, analyze data, and present your findings in a research paper in the form of an oral or written presentation.
How can we build up our emotional intelligence?
Take a moment to think about how you feel right now. Could you describe how you feel, or are you unsure? Being able to identify, label, and understand your emotions in the moment - known in the field of psychology as "emotional granularity" or "emotion differentiation" - is an important skill associated with positive mental health outcomes. In this project, we will explore the state of the research on emotional granularity. You would learn how to identify scientific articles, conduct a literature review, and synthesize your findings. The final product of your literature review can vary based on your interests; for example, you could design a social media-based intervention to increase your followers' emotional granularity or write a children's book to help kids learn how to identify and label subtle differences in their emotions.
