The aim of the Health, Adaptation, and Wellbeing Cluster (HAWC) is to study the individual and social factors that enable people to lead happy and healthy lives throughout the lifespan. As human development is a life-long process, people need to constantly adapt their goals and behaviors to changes in their environments in order to maintain high levels of functioning and wellbeing. Our focus on social aspects of adaptation emphasizes the need for children and adults of all ages to pursue their own wellbeing in cooperation with others in a highly social world. The study of wellbeing and adaptation requires a broad range of methods from the traditional laboratory psychology experiment to longitudinal designs, cross-cultural studies, nationally representative surveys, experience sampling studies, and randomized controlled intervention studies. To analyze these complex data, HAWC research utilizes a broad range of advanced statistical methods such as multi-level modeling, structural equation modeling, growth modeling, and survival analysis.
Currently, the core of the cluster consists of researchers who study wellbeing and adaptation in relation to health (Judith Andersen, Norman Farb), interpersonal relationships (Emily Impett), positive emotions (Jennifer Stellar), social-emotional development and children's mental health (Tina Malti), and personality (Erika Carlson, Ulrich Schimmack).
Faculty Members with primary affiliation to HAWC
Judith Andersen examines the mental and physical health consequences of severe stress and the biological mechanisms by which these changes occur. Her research interests include the physiological processes associated with psychotherapeutic interventions for stress-related health conditions, as well as LGBT population health.
Erika Carlson examines how personality and social contexts affect well-being. Her main research interest is understanding the mechanisms underlying blind spots in self-knowledge and how to improve self-knowledge (e.g., mindfulness). She also examines how personality affects the ways we perceive our social contexts as well as the outcomes of these perceptions.
Joanne Chung studies emotions and personality processes, focusing on minoritized young people including racialized students in Canada and Syrian-origin youth in the Netherlands. She employs diverse methodological approaches and her work emphasizes community-engaged research, open science practices, and a commitment to creating inclusive spaces in academia.
Norman Farb examines the relationship between self-construal, emotional reactions, and well-being. His research interests include neural and cognitive factors that promote stress resilience or vulnerability, mindfulness training, interoception, and relapse prevention in major depression.
Hemalatha Ganapathy-Coleman explores the beliefs and practices surrounding parenting, children, and childhood among Indian Hindu immigrant families in the United States, Canada and India. Current projects examine cultural practices of the Indian community in the Greater Toronto Area and cultural maintenance and adaptation in Indian and Pakistani diasporic communities.
Emily Impett examines topics at the intersection of well-being and interpersonal relationships. Her research interests include motivational factors that promote relationship happiness and health, prosocial emotions across the lifespan, and the authenticity of the self in social contexts.
Tina Malti examines social-emotional and moral development, trajectories of adaptive and maladaptive social behaviour, and mental health in children and adolescents. She also has a strong interest in evidence-based, developmental intervention in school and out-of-school time contexts.
Ulrich Schimmack examines how individuals’ personality influences their wellbeing and adaptation. His research interests include the development and validation of wellbeing measures and the use of advanced statistical models to test causal models of the determinants of wellbeing.
Jennifer Stellar explores the forces that drive prosociality and morality. She examines how self-transcendent emotions (e.g., compassion, awe, gratitude) help individuals overcome their selfish inclinations to prioritize the welfare of others and society as a whole. She also examines how these emotions foster mental and physical health.
Affiliated Faculty Members
Stuart Kamenetsky
social development; exceptionality in human learning, disability and giftedness; cross-cultural psychology.
Keisuke Fukuda
cognitive neuroscience; visual cognition; attention and memory; memory and learning; EEG; Individual differences.
Dax Urbszat
personality, social, forensic and abnormal psychology.
Doug VanderLaan
gender and sexual orientation diversity, child and adolescent mental health, alloparenting; family and peer relationships; developmental psychology; crosscultural psychology; evolutionary psychology; clinical psychology; neuroimaging.