Research
Research Facilities
Alliance & Suicide Prevention Lab
The ASPL, under Dr. Marc Karver, focuses on the evaluation/improvement of mental health services/systems. The lab collaborates with the University of Central Florida on two state-wide suicide prevention grants, each with several aims. Projects include developing, improving, and evaluating suicide prevention trainings for laypeople and mental health professionals. To learn more about the lab and apply, email the ASPL!
Center for Justice Research & Policy
The Center for Justice Research & Policy conducts research that spans across three major areas of the criminal justice system: policing, corrections, and courts -- and with a focus on prevention, intervention, risk and protective factors, systems change, and public safety. By applying rigorous methods and evaluations, and collaborating with practitioners and community partners, research findings will be used to guide and inform policy change.
Dynamics of Externalizing Disorders and Emotional Regulation Lab
The DEXTER laboratory uses quantitative methods to study the structural, longitudinal, mechanistic, and dynamic processes underlying pathological personality traits (e.g., borderline personality disorder features), disinhibited behaviors (e.g., substance use, non-suicidal self-injury, sexual risk behaviors), and their comorbidity. We also investigate the broader taxonomy and comorbidity of psychopathology across time and development.
Disordered Eating Prevention, Treatment, & Health Lab
The DEPTH Lab investigates psychosocial correlates, predictors, and moderators of disordered eating behaviors and outcomes (e.g., dieting behavior, overeating behavior, problematic exercise, weight status) among adolescents and young adults. We are interested in these processes among healthy, pediatric populations (e.g., type 1 diabetes, bariatric surgery patients), and athlete. Moderators of interest include gender, age, athletic identity.
Experimental Existential Psychology Lab
We use experimental methods to research social psychological questions of an existential nature. Some problems of interest to our lab are how people manage concerns associated with mortality and how and why people objectify women. We are also conducting research examining health applications associated with these directions.
Eye Movements and Cognition Lab
The EMaC lab investigates human perception and cognition (e.g., language comprehension and decision-making) using eye tracking software. Our research focuses on the reading process and how eye movements index comprehension. As people move their eyes through the text, they gather information about the current and upcoming word (even before they look at it) and integrate this into their understanding of the sentence as it unfolds in real time.
Family Study Center
Basic and applied research studies concerned with understanding, supporting, and advocating for families with young children
Learning Lab
We conduct research on student learning, and our studies take place in both the laboratory and local classrooms.
Motivated Attention and Perception Lab
How expectations, motivations, and individual differences can influence sensory input and selective attention
Occupational Health Psychology Lab
We mainly study the dark side of the workplace, that is, the bad things that happen to people at work and the bad things people do at work. The bad things that happen include accidents/injuries, mistreatment (e.g., abusive supervision or sexual harassment), physical violence, and stress. The bad things people do includes being abusive to others, avoiding working, sabotaging the work and the workplace, and theft.
REACH Youth Center
The mission of the REACH Youth Center is to conduct and disseminate research designed to improve outcomes for youth living with or at risk for HIV.
Parent-Adolescent Relationships Lab
Adolescents’ and early adults’ relationships with their parents, perceptions of parenting, and the broader family and cultural dynamics contributing to these processes.
Psychology and Law Lab
Dr. Christine Ruva studies legal decision making with a focus on jury decisions. Research Assistants perform various tasks including designing studies, creating measures and stimuli, designing experiments, collecting data, analyzing data, and summarize results. Students have the opportunity to present their work at undergraduate research conferences and national/international conferences. Exceptional students can earn authorship on a publication.
Social Dynamics Lab
Guided by a dynamic systems theoretical foundation, Dr. Michaels’ key idea is that people’s unique characteristics and adaptive cognitive processes continually evolve as situations change. The goal with the Social Dynamic Lab’s research is to understand how individual differences and cognitive mechanisms contribute to how people react to situations and how these carry consequences for favorable versus unfavorable outcomes.
Supporting Parents and ADHD Research for Kids Lab
In the S.P.A.R.K Lab, we are interested in studying how different externalizing behavior disorders (such as ODD and CD) and neurodevelopmental disorders (emphasis on ADHD) impact children in their daily lives — at school, at home, and in their interpersonal relationships. Additionally, we work to develop and test the effectiveness of treatments that might better serve these populations and to figure out how best to disseminate those interventions to the individuals who need them most.
Technology, Adaptation, Coordination, and Training in Interdependent Complex Systems Lab
We are the TACTICS Lab. We are an Industrial-Organizational (I/O) laboratory at the University of South Florida (USF). We conduct research on teams, human-AI teams, technological adaptations in interdependent systems, and more! Under the leadership of Daniel Griffin at the USF, the lab has projects related to the work of organizations such as NASA and the Army Research Institute, and collaborations with universities across the nation.
Tobacco Research and Intervention Program
Moffitt’s Tobacco Research & Intervention Program (TRIP) is directed by Thomas Brandon, a clinical psychologist with an appointment in USF’s Psychology Department. TRIP also includes several other faculty members, as well as staff, postdocs, clinical psychology graduate students, and undergraduate research interns. Research ranges from basic behavioral studies through national clinical trials of smoking cessation interventions.
Work Stress Lab
I-O Psychologist Dr. Claire Smith directs the Work Stress Lab. Research areas of our lab include the work-life interference and occupational health, with foci on health behaviors, leisure time, and lifelong approaches to well-being. Our goal is to promote real-world impacts on work and health lifestyles. Research assistants gain valuable experience contributing to ongoing projects. See our website to learn more, participate, or join the lab.
