Here's a quick overview of the kinds of stuff we do. The links on the left give more specfics about ongoing projects.

(1) Health communication and health behavior change. We aim to discover efficient, effective ways to tailor health behavior change communications to characteristics known about the recipient - such as their health status, perceived risk for health conditions, and motivational orientations.  Much of our research examines the effects of health message framing - that is, communicating the consequences of a health behavior in terms of either the benefits associated with changing it or the risks associated with not changing it - and finds that these two ways of framing the outcomes have vastly different effects on behavior.  Our research identifies the conditions under which each frame is maximally effective in persuading people to make positive changes in their health behavior.

(2)  How expectations, motivations, and self-concept influence reactions to everyday experiences.  Why do different people respond so differently to everyday uplifts and hassles? People's responses to everyday events shape their overall levels of happiness and well-being, so we seek to understand how self-related processes such as expectations, motivations, self-concept and social comparison influence how people respond to everyday events and self-relevant feedback.  We utilize a number of methodologies to answer these questions, such as palm-pilot based experience sampling methods, experimentation, and surveys.

(3) The role of positive psychological states - such as stress-related growth and finding meaning - in coping with stress.  When people confront major stressful events, their responses range from the negative (e.g., depression, PTSD) to the positive, such as reporting posttraumatic growth, positive emotion, and increased meaning in life.  What predicts these positive responses and what effects do these seemingly ironic consequences of stress play in the adjustment process?  Dr. Updegraff has examined these questions in studies of people coping with HIV, violence, and exposure to terrorism.