Current Research Projects

Current STAR GATE projects deal both with physical health and psychological implications of dysfunctions in goal systems and self-regulation.

• Chronic Pain and the Enterprise of Living : In this grant-funded project, co-directed by Prof. Morris Okun, 150 community-residing adults with chronic pain are recruited from the greater Phoenix area via random-digit dialing procedures to take part in laboratory testing and a 21-day, phone diary. The aims of this research include testing of a model of the links between within -day goal progress as mediated and moderated by factors derived from self-regulation theory.

• Risky Behavior and Decision-Making in College Students : In these studies, we identify varied "self-regulatory deficts" such as ADHD and/or OCD tendencies that may function as "vulnerability factors" and seek to examine (1) their relationship to indices of risk taking in college students and (2) whether other aspects of self-regulation might serve as protective or resilience factors.

• The Goal, Self-regulatory, Automatic, Social Systems (GRASSP) Model : Continuing research seeks to clarify the nature of personal goals operating within a self-regulatory system and unfolding with in both laboratory contexts and real-world settings. We have studied such topics such as: how goal construal influences goal pursuit among persons with chronic pain, the link between goal process thinking and physical exercise, the relation of academic goals and academic performance, etc.

• A Situated, NeuroCognitive Motivational (SNM) Perspective on Psychopathology : Represents our theoretical and empirical efforts to characterize psychopathology with in a goal-centered, self-regulatory frame.

Publications                                            Clinical Psychology Program                                          Okun Lab