Denise Janicki-Deverts

Carnegie Mellon University | CMU · Department of Psychology

Objective: Children reared by parents of low socioeconomic status (SES) go on to have elevated rates of physical health problems and premature mortality. However, many children reared in low-SES families remain healthy throughout the life-span. Here, secondary analyses of archival data tested the hypothesis that a positive relationship with parents...

Objective: Children reared by parents of low socioeconomic status (SES) go on to have elevated rates of physical health problems and premature mortality. However, many children reared in low SES families remain healthy throughout the life span. Here, secondary analyses of archival data tested the hypothesis that a positive relationship with parent...

Interpersonal touch is emerging as an important topic in the study of adult relationships, with recent research showing that such behaviors can promote better relationship functioning and individual well-being. This investigation considers whether being hugged is associated with reduced conflict-related decreases in positive affect and increases in...

Bivariate correlations among 14-day averages of the six assessed mood states. (DOCX)

Factor loadings for two affect factors extracted using EFA. (DOCX)

Scree plot comparing sample eigenvalues with 95th percentile eigenvalues obtained from parallel analysis. A comparison of eigenvalues obtained from the exploratory factor analysis of the daily affect data with the 95th percentile of eigenvalues obtained from a parallel analysis based on 10,000 generated random correlation matrices reveals a two fac...

Multilevel model results for predicting concurrent negative affect from hug receipt and conflict exposure not conditioned on the interaction between hugs and conflicts. (DOCX)

Multilevel model results for predicting concurrent positive affect from hug receipt and conflict exposure not conditioned on the interaction between hugs and conflicts. (DOCX)

Multilevel model results for predicting next day positive affect from hug receipt and conflict exposure not conditioned on the interaction between hugs and conflicts. (DOCX)

Multilevel model results for predicting next day negative affect from hug receipt and conflict exposure not conditioned on the interaction between hugs and conflicts. (DOCX)

Significance Adults whose parents separated during childhood are at increased risk for poorer health, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Furthermore, increasing evidence suggests that aspects of the family environment following parental separation better predict a child’s adjustment than the separation itself. Using a viral challeng...

Married people tend to be healthier than both the previously (bereaved, divorced, and separated) and never married, but the mechanisms through which this occurs remain unclear. To this end, research has increasingly focused on how psychological stress experienced by unmarried versus married individuals may differentially impact physiological system...

Background: Sleep is a predictor of infectious illness that may depend on one's socioeconomic status (SES). Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the moderating effects of objective and subjective SES on sleep-clinical cold risk link and test whether nasal inflammation serves as a plausible biological pathway. Methods: This study combined d...

Objective: Studies have revealed a phenomenon called skin-deep resilience, which develops in upwardly mobile African American youth. They perform well in school, maintain good mental health, and avoid legal problems. Despite outward indications of success, they also show evidence of worse health in biomarker studies. Here we extend this research, a...

The immunosuppressive effects of glucocorticoids (GCs) are well-established. However, whether the net effect of GC-elicited alterations in immune function is sufficient to influence a clinically relevant outcome in healthy adults has yet to be shown. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether inter-individual differences in basal saliv...

Objectives: To explore the association of self-rated health (SRH) with host resistance to illness after exposure to a common cold virus and identify mechanisms linking SRH to future health status. Methods: We analyzed archival data from 360 healthy adults (mean [standard deviation] age = 33.07 [10.69] years, 45.6% women). Each completed validate...

Short sleep duration and poor sleep continuity have been implicated in the susceptibility to infectious illness. However, prior research has relied on subjective measures of sleep, which are subject to recall bias. The aim of this study was to determine whether sleep, measured behaviorally using wrist actigraphy, predicted cold incidence following...

Perceived social support has been hypothesized to protect against the pathogenic effects of stress. How such protection might be conferred, however, is not well understood. Using a sample of 404 healthy adults, we examined the roles of perceived social support and received hugs in buffering against interpersonal stress-induced susceptibility to inf...

Childhood adversity, defined in terms of material hardship or physical or emotional maltreatment has been associated with risk for infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) among children and adolescents, and with CMV reactivation in children and adults. The present study examined whether different dimensions of childhood experience—those pertaining to...

Objective: This study sought to determine whether social integration, defined as number of social roles, is associated with better pulmonary function in the elderly and which roles are associated with greatest benefit. It also examined pathways that connect social integration to better lung health. Methods: High functioning men (n = 518) and wom...

Childhood adversity, defined in terms of material hardship or physical or emotional maltreatment has been associated with risk for infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) among children and adolescents, and with CMV reactivation in children and adults. The present study examined whether different dimensions of childhood experience—those pertaining to...

Childhood abuse increases adult risk for morbidity and mortality. Less clear is how this "toxic" stress becomes embedded to influence health decades later, and whether protective factors guard against these effects. Early biological embedding is hypothesized to occur through programming of the neural circuitry that influences physiological response...

Significance Adverse social relations in early life are thought to negatively influence health throughout the lifespan. The present findings provide a biological link regarding why negative early life experiences affect health and further suggest that a loving parental figure may provide protection. It is well recognized that providing children in...

Low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood and adolescence has been found to predict greater susceptibility to common cold viruses in adults. Here, we test whether low childhood SES is associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length in adulthood, and whether telomere length mediates the association between childhood SES and susceptibility to...

Better health is a well-documented benefit of having a higher socioeconomic status (SES). Inflammation may be one pathway through which SES influences health. Using 2658 participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study, we examine whether two measures of SES assessed at baseline (mean age, 32±4years)-years of educ...

Objective: To examine sex differences in the relation of childhood socioeconomic status (CSES) to systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) trajectories during 15 years, spanning young (mean [M] [standard deviation {SD}] = 30 [3] years) and middle (M [SD] = 45 [3] years) adulthood, independent of adult SES. Methods: A total of 4077 adult...

Psychological stress was assessed in 3 national surveys administered in 1983, 2006, and 2009. In all 3 surveys, stress was higher among women than men; and increased with decreasing age, education, and income. Unemployed persons reported high levels of stress, while the retired reported low levels. All associations were independent of one another a...

We propose a model wherein chronic stress results in glucocorticoid receptor resistance (GCR) that, in turn, results in failure to down-regulate inflammatory response. Here we test the model in two viral-challenge studies. In study 1, we assessed stressful life events, GCR, and control variables including baseline antibody to the challenge virus, a...

We review evidence on the role of personality traits in immune function including studies of enumerative and functional immune markers and of host resistance to infectious illness. We begin by discussing a series of pathways through which traits may influence immunity: immune-altering behaviors; concomitant activation of physiological systems; aggr...

To examine whether a 10-year change in occupational standing is related to carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) 5 years later. Data were obtained from 2350 participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. Occupational standing was measured at the Year 5 and 15 CARDIA follow-up examinations when participant...

Social ties are thought to affect mental and physical health by influencing emotions, cognitions, and behavior (Cohen, 1988, 2004). In the case of mental health, the hypothesis is that aspects of social relationships regulate these three response systems by preventing the occurrence of the kinds of extreme response that are associated with dysfunct...

To examine the prospective association of depressive symptoms with circulating C-reactive protein (CRP) and to determine the direction of that association. Using data from 2,544 healthy participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study (ages, 33-45 years; 55% female; 42% black), we examined the prospective association of de...

Socioeconomic status (SES) exposures during childhood are powerful predictors of adult cardiovascular morbidity, cardiovascular mortality, all-cause mortality, and mortality due to a range of specific causes. However, we still know little about when childhood SES exposures matter most, how long they need to last, what behavioral, psychological, or...

Hostility has been associated with heightened proinflammatory activity. However, it is not known whether greater hostility contributes to greater inflammation by promoting higher Th1 activity, lower Th2 activity, or both. The present study examines the relation of hostility to mitogen-stimulated Th1 and Th2 cytokine production in vitro. Participant...

Persons with more types of social relationships live longer and have less cognitive decline with aging, greater resistance to infectious disease, and better prognoses when facing chronic life-threatening illnesses. We have known about the importance of social integration (engaging in diverse types of relationships) for health and longevity for 30 y...

To examine whether socioeconomic status (SES) (education, occupation, income), is associated both cross sectionally and prospectively with circulating concentrations of a) two correlates of oxidative damage, F(2)-isoprostanes (F(2)-IsoPs) and gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT); and b) antioxidant nutrients (ascorbic acid and carotenoids). We also exam...

Sleep quality is thought to be an important predictor of immunity and, in turn, susceptibility to the common cold. This article examines whether sleep duration and efficiency in the weeks preceding viral exposure are associated with cold susceptibility. A total of 153 healthy men and women (age range, 21-55 years) volunteered to participate in the...

Unemployment is associated with risk of future morbidity and premature mortality. To examine whether unemployment history predicts future C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in male participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. Unemployment, body mass index (BMI), and health behaviors were measured at 7, 10, and 1...

Recent evidence suggests that depressive symptoms and hostility may act together, as interacting factors, to have an effect on the circulating levels of inflammatory markers relevant to coronary artery disease. Further research, however, is needed to clarify the nature of this interaction and to determine whether previous findings extend to older a...

Despite widespread public belief that psychological stress leads to disease, the biomedical community remains skeptical of this conclusion. In this Commentary, we discuss the plausibility of the belief that stress contributes to a variety of disease processes and summarize the role of stress in 4 major diseases: clinical depression, cardiovascular...

To determine whether socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with catecholamine levels (epinephrine [E] and norepinephrine [NE]-indicators of sympathetic nervous system [SNS] activity) in a community-based sample of men and women, Blacks and Whites, with a broad range of income; and to test whether such a relationship is mediated by psychosocial f...

Infection commonly triggers nonspecific psychological and behavioral changes including fatigue and malaise, anhedonia, inability to concentrate, and disturbed sleep that collectively are termed "sickness behaviors". Converging evidence from several lines of research implicate the activities of proinflammatory cytokines as a cause of sickness behavi...

This study examined whether 15-hr and 24-hr urinary catecholamine measures show comparable associations with other physiological measures that are expected to correlate with sympathetic nervous system activity. Participants (193 healthy adults) provided 24-hr urine samples that were collected in a controlled environment (hotel), and divided into 9-...