John Coffey

Arizona State University | ASU · School of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Parents are inundated with suggestions to improve their relationships with their children and promote child development, but improving caregiver well-being is often overlooked despite being considered one of the most important methods to promote healthy child development. Drawing on the robust literature on the emotional and relationship benefits o...

Because the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic has introduced significant stressors to people's lives, more research on self‐directed strategies to cope with pandemic‐related stress is needed. In the current longitudinal experiment ( N = 614), we investigated the emotional benefits of two self‐directed strategies—belonging affirmation and recalling kindness...

Objective: Nearly 50% of adults under age 29 report using some form of online dating to find sexual partners or romantic relationships. Limited evidence suggests online and offline dating behaviors and experiences can vary. We aimed to expand understanding these differences by examining how attachment styles are associated with online and offline s...

In this study, we investigated the association between positive emotion expression in children’s writing at age 11, as indicated by objective raters, and age 50 self-reported well-being outcomes—positive emotions, optimism, life satisfaction, meaning in life, social well-being, and physical health. Using a representative sample (N = 436) from the U...

Attachment insecurity undermines emotions, well-being, and adaptive parenting behaviors. In this experiment (N = 614), we investigate whether expressing gratitude improves parents’ emotions, feelings of connectedness, well-being, and parenting outcomes. Furthermore, we evaluate whether a specific type of gratitude – safe haven gratitude – is especi...

Parents often hope for their children to be happy and to have high self-esteem, but little research has compared how these two constructs are related to long-term self-esteem and life satisfaction. Although self-esteem and positive affect are related, positive affect can be experienced independent of self-worth so it may not have the same limitatio...

Feeling loved has many benefits, but research is limited on how daily behaviors of one person in a relationship shape why someone else feels more or less loved from day to day. The parent-adolescent relationship is a primary source of love. We expected parent-reported warmth and conflict would explain daily fluctuations in how loved adolescents rep...

Parents want their children to be happy, educated, and successful, but are these goals related? People assume that success leads to happiness, but research on adults supports a reverse conceptualization: Happy people are more successful. Is happiness during childhood also linked to later success? Across the lifespan positive affect is linked with e...

Among parents’ greatest wishes for their children is that they grow up happy, healthy, and successful. In other words, they want their children to flourish (i.e., a peak level of well- being that extends beyond the absence of pathologies). Thus, the focus of this chapter is on providing an overarching perspective on early childhood optimal develo...

Negative emotion is typically associated with avoidance behavior; however, recent advances in the adult literature show that unlike some emotions (sadness, shame), anger predicts both approach and avoidance. Here we propose that socialization to suppress anger will play a role in whether children who express anger respond to a performance challenge...

In this chapter, we provide a vignette to highlight a few of the ways that one might experience flow (i.e., optimal experience) while on vacation. Flow experiences occur when you become fully and energetically absorbed in an activity such that the activity is rewarding in and of itself, regardless of the extrinsic outcomes. These flow experiences a...

The assessment of attachment security in infancy and adulthood is well-studied, but middle childhood has been relatively neglected in the literature. The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) represents a promising assessment of attachment in middle childhood; recent evidence supports its reliability and validity in restricted samples. We assessed the c...

ABSTRACT Consistent with predictions derived from the self-expansion model, this three-year longitudinal study found that: participation in more college groups during sophomore year predicted increases in inclusion of the college community in the self at the end of junior year, which further predicted increases in satisfaction with the college expe...

A prominent research tradition within the field of attachment involves analyzing relationship narratives for qualities thought to reveal important information regarding the organization of attachment, and the different ways in which attachment insecurity presents. Researchers increasingly use this method to assess attachment in middle childhood, bu...

Objective: This commentary reviews current conceptualizations of well-being, examines explanations for the lack of attention to well-being research, and provides justification for investing research time and funding into well-being studies. Opportunities for integrating factors related to well-being into prevention and intervention programs are als...

Although much is written about the impact of deployment on nondeployed spouses (NDSs) and couple relationships, few empirical studies address this directly. Using attachment theory as a guiding framework, this study followed 32 NDSs across a military deployment. We examined the prospective association between NDSs' attachment avoidance and their re...

Well-being theory (WBT) proposes five indicators of well-being [i.e., positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, achievement (PERMA)] that are, independently , empirically supported predictors of flourishing (i.e., an optimal level of well-being; Seligman in Flourish: a visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press,...

Few empirical studies have focused on young children’s happiness (high positive affect and low negative affect) and specifically whether it is related to adult well-being. Adult well-being indices (e.g., life satisfaction, workplace hope, and optimism) may have developmental roots in early affect. In the 28-year Fullerton Longitudinal Study (N = 12...