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VCU Department of Psychology

Ongoing Research Projects

• Emotion Regulatory Flexibility among African American Adolescents
• Rigorous Evaluation of Prevention Strategies to Prevent and Reduce Community Rates of Youth Violence
• Online Racism and Mental Health Symptomatology Among Black Adolescents: A Longitudinal Examination
• A Physiological Approach to Examining the Role of Racial Coping on Mental Health Among Black Adolescents
• Merging Developmental and Educational Perspectives on Ethnic-Racial Identity and Ethnic-Racial Socialization to Foster Culturally Responsive Education

Completed Research Projects

• Racial Socialization in Multiracial Families: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

Team Members

• Rachel Davis
• Stephen Gibson
• Kiara Brown
• Summer Bryant
• Kimberly Lazarus

About

My research takes a developmental and community-based approach to understanding the normative emotional experience and promoting the emotional liberation of Black and Brown populations, with a specific emphasis on African American and Latino/a/e/x communities. Emotional liberation refers to an individual having full access to the range of emotions that are a part of the human experience without worry about the ways that their emotions may be misinterpreted and weaponized against them through racial bias. I pursue these goals in three ways: (1) by conducting within-group research to understand the cultural and racial factors that shape the emotional development of Black and Brown populations, (2) publishing developmental and affective science to elucidate these cultural and racial factors, and (3) partnering with community organizations to translate and disseminate my research findings into practice by educators, leaders, youth service providers, community health workers, and others who support Black and Brown youth and families. Within cross-sectional and longitudinal research design, I rely on both qualitative (i.e., thematic analysis) and quantitative analytic methods (i.e., structural equation modeling, negative binomial regressions, multilevel latent class analysis, hierarchical linear modeling) of data obtained through questionnaire, observation, interview, and psychophysiological assessment.