Amie Gordon

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Psychology

Objetivo: Estudios transversales anteriores han demostrado que más (frente a menos) personas sexualmente activas tienden a ser mental y físicamente más saludables, pero se sabe poco sobre los mecanismos proximales subyacentes a tales asociaciones. Métodos: Analizamos dos conjuntos de datos de muestreo de experiencias (N = 8,452, 66,181 observacione...

Recent work is establishing awe as an important positive emotion that offers physical and psychological benefits. However, early theorizing suggests that awe’s experience is often tinged with fear. How then, do we reconcile emergent positive conceptualizations of awe with its more fearful elements? We suggest that positive conceptualizations of awe...

Paced breathing—longer exhalation than inhalation—can show short-term improvement of physiologic responses and affective well-being, though most studies have relied on narrow sample demographics, small samples, and control conditions that fail to address expectancy effects. We addressed these limitations through an app-based experiment where partic...

How does physiological reactivity to emotional experiences change with age? Previous studies addressing this question have mostly been conducted in laboratory settings during which emotions are induced via pictures, films, or relived memories, raising external validity questions. In the present research, we draw upon two datasets collected using ec...

Objective: This study examines the within- and between-person associations of acute and chronic stress with blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) using an app-based research platform. Methods: We examined data from 31,964 adults (aged 18-90) in an app-based ecological momentary assessment study that used a research-validated optic sensor to me...

Social relationships influence physical health, yet questions remain regarding the nature of this association. For instance, when it comes to predicting health-relevant processes in daily life, few studies have examined (a) the relative importance of both positive and negative relational experiences, and (b) variability in relational experiences (i...

Background Sleep can have consequential effects on people’s health and well-being, and these effects may vary among younger and older adults. Purpose The goal of the present study was to investigate how sleep relates to physiologic and stress responses in daily life across adulthood. Methods We used an Ecological Momentary Assessment method in a...

Sleep has strong influences on affective and social experiences. However, less is known about the reciprocal effects of sleep, affect, and social experiences at a daily level, and little work has considered racial/ethnic minorities at high risk for social disconnection and discrimination. A 7-day daily experience study assessed the bidirectional re...

Gratitude and optimism are positive psychological dispositions associated with beneficial outcomes. To examine their associations with physiological and psychological experiences in daily life, we examined data from an Ecological Momentary Assessment study (N = 4,825), including blood pressure, heart rate, and reports of stress, health behaviors, a...

Significance Exaggerated blood pressure (BP) reactivity is associated with the development of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Stress, and, to a lesser extent, emotions are suggested to be linked to BP reactivity, but this theorizing lacks robust evidence beyond small laboratory or field studies with narrow participant demographics. Using a...

Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identi...

The transition to college is a stressful experience. For members of underrepresented minority groups, the usual stresses are frequently accompanied by ethnicity-based stressors, including discrimination. This longitudinal study extends prior work on discrimination by examining the prospective associations between anticipated and experienced ethnic/...

Sleep problems are increasingly being recognized as a public health epidemic with data suggesting that over 69% of US adults get less sleep than they need. Despite the important role that sleep plays in our lives, sleep has been historically absent from the social psychological literature. Recently, however, researchers have started recognizing the...

Objective: This set of studies examines the bi-directional links between social rejection and sleep, a ubiquitous and increasingly problematic health behavior. Methods: In Study 1, a multi-day field experiment, 43 participants completed a neutral task just prior to sleep on night 1 and a social rejection task on night 2. Objective and subjective...

Sleep problems have become a public health epidemic with recent data suggesting that more than 69% of U.S. adults get less sleep than they need. Despite the important role that sleep plays in our lives, sleep as a variable of interest in interpersonal processes has been historically absent from the psychological literature. Recently, however, resea...

Humility is a foundational virtue that counters selfish inclinations such as entitlement, arrogance, and narcissism (Tangney, 2000). We hypothesize that experiences of awe promote greater humility. Guided by an appraisal-tendency framework of emotion, we propose that when individuals encounter an entity that is vast and challenges their worldview,...

In this article we review the emerging literature on the self-transcendent emotions. We discuss how the self-transcendent emotions differ from other positive emotions and outline the defining features of this category. We then provide an analysis of three specific self-transcendent emotions—compassion, gratitude, and awe—detailing what has been lea...

Awe has been theorized as a collective emotion, one that enables individuals to integrate into social collectives. In keeping with this theorizing, we propose that awe diminishes the sense of self and shifts attention away from individual interests and concerns. In testing this hypothesis across 6 studies (N = 2137), we first validate pictorial and...

Theoretical conceptualizations of awe suggest this emotion can be more positive or negative depending on specific appraisal processes. However, the emergent scientific study of awe rarely emphasizes its negative side, classifying it instead as a positive emotion. In the present research we tested whether there is a more negative variant of awe that...

Conflict can have damaging effects on relationship health. But is all conflict detrimental? Across 7 studies, we tested the overarching hypothesis that conflict in close relationships is only detrimental when people do not feel their thoughts, feelings, and point of view are understood by their relationship partners. Supporting this, conflict was n...

Social power elicits an array of psychological tendencies that likely impact processes related to the fundamental need for belonging—including how people respond to social rejection. Across three studies, using multiple methods and instantiations of power and rejection, we hypothesized that power buffers people from the typically adverse emotional...

Negative emotions are reliably associated with poorer health (e.g., Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002), but only recently has research begun to acknowledge the important role of positive emotions for our physical health (Fredrickson, 2003). We examine the link between dispositional positive affect and one potential biological pathway...

This research examines whether people who are experiencing more depressive symptoms perceive their partners as less able to understand their thoughts and feelings. Results showed that depressive symptoms (Studies 1 and 3) and depressive mood (Study 2) were negatively associated with perceived understanding in general (Study 1), in daily life (Study...

This study investigated how sacrificing for approach versus avoidance goals shapes the giver's and the recipient's emotions and relationship quality. A sample of 80 dating couples participated in a three-part study in which they discussed sacrifice in the laboratory (Part 1), reported on their daily sacrifices for 14 days (Part 2), and completed a...

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the role of people's own investment in promoting relationship commitment, less research has considered the possible role of the partner's investments. An experiment (Study 1) and two combined daily experience and longitudinal studies (Studies 2 and 3) documented that perceived investments from one...

Reconciling competing viewpoints suggesting that power helps and hurts perspective-taking in close relationships, in two experiments and two daily experience studies we tested the hypothesis that power's effect on perspective-taking depends on the extent to which people are relatively self- versus other-focused. In Study 1, recalling a time of high...

This research examined the impact of a basic biological process-namely, sleep-on relationship conflict, specifically testing whether poor sleep influences the degree, nature, and resolution of conflict. In Study 1, a 14-day daily experience study, participants reported more conflict in their romantic relationships following poor nights of sleep. In...

This multimethod series of studies merges the literatures on gratitude and risk regulation to test a new process model of gratitude and relationship maintenance. We develop a measure of appreciation in relationships and use cross-sectional, daily experience, observational, and longitudinal methods to test our model. Across studies, we show that peo...

What happens when people suppress their emotions when they sacrifice for a romantic partner? This multimethod study investigates how suppressing emotions during sacrifice shapes affective and relationship outcomes. In Part 1, dating couples came into the laboratory to discuss important romantic relationship sacrifices. Suppressing emotions was asso...

Research suggests that not all affirmations of self-worth are created equal-affirming intrinsic aspects of the self (i.e., a person's stable, intrinsic qualities) leads to better outcomes for the individual compared to affirming extrinsic aspects (i.e., a person's deeds and accomplishments). Extending this research to the domain of romantic relatio...

Who benefits most from making sacrifices for others? The current study provides one answer to this question by demonstrating the intrinsic benefits of sacrifice for people who are highly motivated to respond to a specific romantic partner's needs noncontingently, a phenomenon termed communal strength. In a 14-day daily-experience study of 69 romant...

In 2 daily experience studies and a laboratory study, the authors test predictions from approach-avoidance motivational theory to understand how dating couples can maintain feelings of relationship satisfaction in their daily lives and over the course of time. Approach goals were associated with increased relationship satisfaction on a daily basis...

This research provides the first empirical investigation of how attachment orientations contribute to approach and avoidance goals for engaging in sacrifice. Study 1 is a cross-sectional study of individuals in dating relationships, and Study 2 is a 14-day daily experience study of dating couples. Results showed that attachment anxiety was associat...

This research provides the first empirical investigation of how both partners’ attachment orientations contribute to daily sexual goals. Both members of 84 dating couples who attended a large urban university on the West Coast in the United States completed a measure of attachment orientation, and 1 member completed a measure of sexual goals for 14...