J. DAVID CRESWELL, PhD
CURRICULUM VITAE
Please click on the following link to download my C.V.
Areas of Specialization:
Health Psychology, Psychoneuroimmunology, Social Neuroscience, Positive
Psychology, Social Cognition, and Social Psychology
Interests: Self-regulation,
stress and coping, mind-body relationships, behavioral interventions, meditation,
research methods, health behaviors (exercise, sleep), and performance enhancement
My research focuses
broadly on studying psychological factors and how they influence health
and human performance. Currently, I am exploring basic questions about
stress and coping through two models of stress reduction. In one line of
research, I am examining the stress pathways linking mindfulness meditation
training with improved health outcomes. In this work, I am studying how
mindfulness meditation can improve clinical health outcomes in patient
populations (HIV/AIDS, older adults), and the underlying psychosocial,
neural, genetic, physiologic, and stress pathways guiding these effects.
For example, I am currently collecting data on a randomized controlled
trial of mindfulness meditation training on functional neural responses
to threatening stimuli in a sample of healthy older adults. This study
also includes measures of inflammatory mediators, genetic polymorphisms,
gene expression, psychological status, working memory, and stress. In other
studies, I am exploring the stress pathways of mindfulness in laboratory
stress-challenge tasks. In second line of research, I am exploring the
stress buffering effects of self-affirmation. These studies consist of
laboratory investigations exploring how self-affirmation reduces stress
and improves health outcomes.
In summary, my work
consists of exploring how psychological processes can be used to understand
and improve quality of life, performance, and health in a variety of populations.
This work is guided by the assumption that these questions are best addressed
by using a variety of experimental methods and measures. The work thus
far has been successful because of a strong belief in the strength of multi-disciplinary
collaborations among psychologists, neuroscientists, geneticists, microbiologists,
and psychiatrists, to name a few.