Justin Lavner

University of Georgia | UGA · Department of Psychology

Objective: This study examined the effects of the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) prevention program on children’s outcomes more than 2 years after enrollment, including direct effects of the intervention and indirect effects through couple functioning and parent–child relations. Method: Three hundred forty-six African America...

Objective: This study examined whether a family-focused prevention program for African American families could buffer the negative effect of perceived financial strain on protective parent–child interactions and thereby reduce the indirect effect of financial strain on youth conduct problems. Method: Three hundred and forty-six African American cou...

Objective To estimate the overall effect between positive and negative communication behaviors and later relationship quality and dissolution. Background Behavioral models of relationship development argue that the quality of couples' communication is key to understanding later relational outcomes. However, longitudinal studies have yielded incons...

Importance: Black individuals in the US experience sleep disparities beginning in infancy and continuing throughout the lifespan, suggesting early interventions are needed to improve sleep. Objective: To investigate whether a responsive parenting (RP) intervention for Black mothers improves infant sleep and increases responsive sleep parenting p...

Experiences of racial discrimination are common among Black youth and predict worse mental health cross-sectionally and over time. Additional research is needed to address lingering questions regarding the direction of effect(s) underlying these patterns, differences in the magnitude of effects across adolescence, and gender differences. To address...

Black Americans have demonstrated significant resilience in the face of stress caused by systemic oppression. This resilience is likely to stem from several factors across socioecological levels, including those internal to the individual (assets) and those external to the individual (resources), but existing work has yet to consider these within a...

This study examines gender differences in the degree to which men’s and women’s views of their relationship predict eventual dissolution among mixed-gender couples. We analyzed data from a national sample of 314 unmarried mixed-gender couples from the United States that were surveyed across four years to test gender differences in associations betw...

The transition to parenthood has long been viewed as a period of change in new parents’ romantic relationships. However, this research has largely focused on changes in relationship quality, generally overlooking changes in relationship status (e.g., ending or entering a relationship during this period). To address this gap, we explored patterns an...

Objective: This study examined variability in response to a couple and relationship education program for Black coparenting couples using group-based trajectory modeling. We identified groups of couples with different relationship satisfaction trajectories across a 2-year period following preintervention assessment. Method: Black couples with a pre...

Although some research has examined the mental health of individual family members in military families, additional research is needed that considers mental health among multiple members of the family system simultaneously and that characterizes subsets of families with distinct patterns. Mental health patterns of depressive symptoms and well-being...

The transition to parenthood can be a challenging time for the relationships of new parents and result in declines in relationship satisfaction. Although a robust literature has identified characteristics that predict changes in relationship satisfaction during this period, the relationships of Black mothers postpartum remain understudied. To addre...

Objetivo: Determinar si una intervención diseñada para mejorar las prácticas tempranas de crianza receptiva (RP, por sus siglas en inglés) (p. ej., leer las señales de los bebés, establecer rutinas a la hora de acostarse) y promover el sueño y la tranquilidad de los bebés entre las familias Negras tiene beneficios secundarios para el sueño posparto...

This article includes Author Insights, a video abstract available at: Perinatal depression in transgender and gender expansive individuals (youtube.com).

This study investigated differences in depressive symptoms, loneliness, and self‐esteem for monosexual (lesbian, gay) and plurisexual (bisexual, pansexual, queer) sexual minority youth (SMY) by relationship status (single, partnered) and relationship configuration (same‐gender partner, different‐gender partner). Participants included 338 SMY ( M ag...

Although prominent theories of intimate relationships, and couples themselves, often conceive of relationships as fluctuating widely in their degree of closeness, longitudinal studies generally describe partners’ satisfaction as stable and continuous or as steadily declining over time. The increasing use of group-based trajectory models (GBTMs) to...

Despite evidence that nurturant-involved parenting is linked with children's social, psychological, and physiological development, less is known about the specific contexts in which nurturant-involved parenting is most beneficial for children's mental and physical health. The present study examined how associations between nurturant-involved parent...

This study examines whether shift-and-persist coping, a coping strategy defined by accepting challenges and remaining hopeful for the future, is associated with psychosocial and physical health and/or moderates the effects of contextual stress (i.e., racial discrimination, financial strain) on health among African American adolescents living in the...

Centuries of systemic racism in the United States have led to Black Americans facing a disproportionate amount of life stressors. These stressors can have negative effects on mental and physical health, contributing to inequities throughout the life span. In the current study, we used longitudinal data from 692 Black adults in the rural South to ex...

Family members' reactions to youth identity disclosure are important predictors of well-being for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) youth. To better understand potential variation within and across families' current reactions, this study established latent profiles of family level reaction patterns and examined pred...

Extensive research has demonstrated that couples' communication quality is related to many aspects of couples' lives, including relationship satisfaction. However, the possibility that the quality of couples' communication might vary as a function of the topic of communication and the implications of this variability have received relatively little...

Objective: Many parents use food to soothe their infant, regardless of infant hunger, which can increase risk for rapid weight gain. Interventions promoting alternative soothing strategies may help parents respond more appropriately to crying. This secondary analysis aimed to examine effects of the Sleep SAAF (Strong African American Families) res...

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in substantial hardship for Black Americans, leading to increased stress and mental health difficulties. We used longitudinal data from the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) intervention study to test the hypothesis that improved couple functioning following ProSAAF participation would serve as a c...

The goal was to examine direct and indirect associations between racial discrimination and parenting among African American mothers and fathers. Experiences of racial discrimination are common among African Americans, with well‐documented effects on individual functioning. Greater attention to associations between racial discrimination and family f...

Objective: High levels of father engagement are associated with better outcomes for children across a number of domains. Correlational evidence suggests that the quality of the romantic relationship between parents plays a strong role in the extent to which fathers are meaningfully involved with their children, but existing literature cannot addre...

Growing up in a risky environment is associated with poor lifespan physical and mental health. However, promotive factors that have protective or compensatory effects (i.e., buffer against negative outcomes or promote positive ones in the context of risk) allow individuals to remain healthy despite adverse upbringings. Parental vigilance, including...

Background/objective: Parents shape children's early experiences with food, influencing what is served, children's food choices, and how much children eat. Responsive parenting (RP) interventions such as INSIGHT have improved maternal infant feeding practices, but have only been tested among predominantly White families. This secondary analysis of...

There is a longstanding belief in relationship science and popular opinion that women are the barometers in mixed-gender relationships such that their perceptions about the partnership carry more weight than men’s in predicting future relationship satisfaction, but this idea has yet to be rigorously tested. We analyze data from two studies to test...

Although sexual satisfaction is a defining feature of marriage, research has consistently found that sexual satisfaction declines over time. Recently, however, emerging findings provide a more optimistic perspective on sexual satisfaction development by suggesting that couples may follow diverse sexual satisfaction trajectories. Using Dyadic Latent...

Despite changing societal attitudes and acceptance of sexual minority individuals, gay men continue to seek out sexual minority-specific spaces. These spaces are often assumed to primarily consist of gay venues or neighborhoods in urban and metropolitan areas, but there is also a desire for less traditional gay spaces. To better understand the expe...

The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between experiences of racial discrimination and private regard (i.e., feelings about being Black and other Black people) among 346 Black early adolescents who completed four assessments over two years. Between-person (interpersonal) and within-person (intrapersonal) effects were t...

The health benefits of breast milk feeding have been well-established, yet disparities exist, with African American mothers having the lowest breast milk feeding rates in the United States. This prospective, longitudinal study examined infant feeding (breast milk and/or infant formula) from birth to age 16 weeks, predictors of any breast milk feedi...

Responsive parenting (RP) interventions reduce rapid infant weight gain but their effect for underserved populations is largely unknown. The Sleep SAAF (Strong African American Families) study is a two-arm randomized clinical trial for primiparous African American mother-infant dyads that compares an RP intervention to a child safety control over t...

The present study was designed to examine the complex bidirectional associations between relationship quality and depressive symptoms among African American couples. Informed by the Marital Discord Model, particular attention was devoted to understanding the unique associations of positive and negative dimensions of relationship functioning with de...

We expand upon prior work (Gibbons et al., 2012) relating childhood stressor effects, particularly harsh childhood environments, to risky behavior and ultimately physical health by adding longer-term outcomes – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) methylation-based measures of accelerated aging (DNA m -aging). Further, following work on the effects of early...

Despite considerable literature documenting associations between relationship functioning and depressive symptoms, there has been relatively little direct examination of this association among African American couples. Likewise, little research has investigated factors that may exacerbate this association. The current study addressed this gap by in...

Black Americans have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To better understand changes in and predictors of their mental and physical health, in the current study, we used three waves of data (two prepandemic and a third during summer 2020) from 329 Black men and women in the rural South. Results indicated that health worsened...

Black adults in the rural South experience elevated financial strain and other contextual stressors, increasing their risk for poor health. Supportive relationships, particularly positive romantic relationships, have been shown to offset these risks. The present study aims to provide experimental evidence of the buffering effect of supportive relat...

Jonason and Luoto (2021) examined group differences in Dark Triad (DT) traits across sexual orientations and interpreted their results as indicative of higher levels of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism among sexual minority individuals. We address three ways in which this work lacks methodological rigor: (1) analytic decisions, (2) mea...

To inform research and practice with distressed couples, the current study was designed to examine patterns of change among distressed, help-seeking couples prior to receiving an intervention. Data from this study originate from 221 couples assigned to the waitlist control condition of a randomized controlled trial for couples seeking online help f...

Consistent with the emotional cycle of deployment, postdeployment reintegration is often a time of highs and lows as service members (SMs) and their families adjust to their new normal. However, few studies have considered the nuances of reintegration, specifically the various patterns of personal and family reintegration experiences that may exist...

Objective To examine associations between objective (i.e., rank, time away for deployment, combat deployments) and subjective (i.e., difficulty coping with military life) military-related stressors and multiple domains of family well-being, including marital interactions, marital quality, parenting quality, and family functioning. Background Milit...

Relationship science contends that the quality of couples’ communication predicts relationship satisfaction over time. Most studies testing these links have examined between-person associations, yet couple dynamics are also theorized at the within-person level: For a given couple, worsened communication is presumed to predict deteriorations in futu...

Objective Black youth experience racial discrimination at high rates. This study sought to further understand the longitudinal effects of racial discrimination on their mental health by examining cross-lagged associations between perceived racial discrimination and depressive symptoms at the between-person (interindividual) level and the within-per...

The adverse impact of racial discrimination on youth, and particularly its impact on the development of depressive symptoms, has prompted attention regarding the potential for family processes to protect youth from these erosive effects. Evidence from non-experimental studies indicates that protective parenting behavior (PPB) which occurs naturally...

This study examined the effects of the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) prevention program on adults' self-reported health outcomes 25 months after enrollment. ProSAAF is a couple-focused prevention program specifically designed to meet the needs of African-American families residing in the rural South. African-American couples...

Gay men experience various stressors, including gay-specific stressors such as discrimination and internalized homonegativity as well as general stressors such as occupational and financial strain. While a robust literature has examined how gay-specific stressors are associated with negative mental health outcomes among gay men, less attention has...

On 26 May, 2019, the nutrition community lost a visionary ambassador, trusted advisor, and cherished mentor. Leann Birch was a pioneer in bringing a developmental psychology perspective to the study of children's nutrition as a means to respond to real-world questions raised by parents. Leann Elsie Traub was born in Owosso, Michigan 25 June, 1946....

Objectives: Experiences of racial discrimination are common for Black Americans and have been associated with depression and sleep disturbance, factors likely involved in the insidious development of health disparities. The current study replicates these associations and examines longitudinal linkages. Method: Black American couples (men: N = 248,...

Biography of Leann L. Birch, PhD

Family-centered prevention programs for couples with children are being increasingly disseminated, with the hope that improving couples’ romantic relationships will lead to other benefits for families. To date, however, it is unclear whether these interventions do in fact yield these benefits. The current study addressed this gap by examining wheth...

This study examined positive affect (PA) trajectories over the first year of life among infants of mothers with a history of depression (N = 191) as well as predictors (i.e., maternal prenatal and postpartum depression symptoms, maternal parenting behaviors) of those trajectories. Infant PA was observed in play and feeding tasks during laboratory v...

An increasing number of couples in the United States are entering their first marriage having already had a child together, raising important questions about whether and how these couples' marriages differ from newlywed couples who enter marriage without children. The current study used 5 waves of data collected over the first 4.5 years of marriage...

Research on gay men has largely focused on health disparities and minority stress, but scholars have called for greater attention to resilience and the positive aspects of being a sexual minority. In the broader social psychology literature, research has found that capitalization—the act of sharing personal, positive life events with others—can ben...

Couples’ marital satisfaction is thought to decline over the newlywed years, but recent research indicates that the majority of spouses have high, stable trajectories during this period, and significant declines occur only among initially dissatisfied spouses. These findings are drawn from predominantly White, middle-class samples, however, which m...

This study examines the ways in which collecting data from individuals versus couples affects the characteristics of the resulting sample in basic research studies of romantic relationships. From a nationally representative sample of 1,294 individuals in a serious romantic relationship, approximately half of whom were randomly selected to invite th...

The current study examined trajectories of relationship confidence, defined as the belief that oneself and the partner together have the skills needed to navigate conflict and maintain a partnership into the future. This study uses data from a sample of 1,294 partnered but unmarried young adults to examine trajectories of relationship confidence ac...

Background: Responsive parenting interventions that shape parenting behaviors in the areas of sleep and soothing, appropriate and responsive feeding, and routines represent a promising approach to early obesity prevention and have demonstrated effectiveness in our previous trials. However, this approach has yet to be applied to the populations mos...

Sexual minorities are exposed to various gay-related and general stressors that increase risk of mental and physical health problems. Yet, less attention has been paid to positive factors such as ameliorative coping strategies and social supports that reduce risk of mental health difficulties in this population. The current study sought to address...

Researchers often seek to synthesize results of multiple studies on the same topic to draw statistical or substantive conclusions and to estimate effect sizes that will inform power analyses for future research. The most popular synthesis approach is meta‐analysis. There have been few discussions and applications of other synthesis approaches. This...

This article discusses how sexual orientation-based stigma serves to undermine functioning in female same-sex relationships. We particularly focus on the unique roles of interpersonal stigma (e.g., victimization, microaggressions) and structural stigma (e.g., institutional forms of discrimination), highlighting critical limitations and gaps in this...

Adults with autism and subclinical autistic traits report greater internalizing problems than their peers, but the psychological processes underlying these associations are not well understood. The current study used structural equation modeling to examine whether social experiences (social connectedness and loneliness) mediate the link between aut...

Broader autism phenotype in relation to emotion dysregulation and the role of positive parenting

Racial discrimination is a common stressor for African Americans, with negative consequences for mental and physical well-being. It is likely that these effects extend into the family, but little research has examined the association between racial discrimination and couple functioning. This study used dyadic data from 344 rural, predominantly low-...

1 Objective This study examined baseline child social and emotional functioning as predictors of therapeutic alliance during a cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) program for children with anxiety disorders. It was hypothesized that better social and emotional functioning at baseline would be related to stronger alliance initially and over the cours...

This study investigated (a) the stress spillover pathways linking contextual stressors, changes in couple relationship functioning and depressive symptoms, and changes in individuals’ physical health, and (b) the stress-buffering effect of participation in an efficacious, family centered prevention program designed to protect couples from the delet...

For the past two decades, policymakers have invested heavily in promoting the quality and stability of intimate relationships in low-income communities. To date, these efforts have emphasized relationship-skills education, but large-scale evaluations of these programs indicate that they have produced negligible benefits. Current policies are limite...

The early years of marriage are a time of significant personal and relational changes as partners adjust to their new roles, but the specific ways that spouses’ personalities may change in early marriage and how these changes are associated with spouses’ marital satisfaction trajectories have been overlooked. Using 3 waves of data collected over th...

Intimate partner aggression is common in dissatisfied relationships, yet it remains unclear whether intimate partner aggression is a correlate of relationship satisfaction, whether it predicts or follows from relationship satisfaction over time, or whether longitudinal associations are in fact bidirectional in nature. The present study evaluates th...

Background Previous RCTs to prevent early rapid weight gain were conducted in predominantly White, well-educated, middle-income mother-infants at low risk for obesity. To inform the design of an RCT in a higher-risk sample, we conducted a short-term, longitudinal study to compare maternal feeding beliefs and behaviors, infant sleep, intake, and gro...

Individuals are generally attracted to other people with similar personality traits, but it is unclear whether these patterns replicate for maladaptive personality traits. Accordingly, we examined the association between individuals’ own maladaptive personality traits and how desirable they found those traits in a potential romantic partner (N = 33...

Enhancing communication as a means of promoting relationship quality has been increasingly questioned, particularly for couples at elevated sociodemographic risk. In response, the current study investigated communication change as a mechanism accounting for changes in relationship satisfaction and confidence among 344 rural, predominantly low-incom...

Although many studies have found that higher workloads covary with lower levels of marital satisfaction, the question of whether workloads may also predict changes in marital satisfaction over time has been overlooked. To address this question, we investigated the lagged association between own and partner workload and marital satisfaction using ei...

Narcissism is associated with dysfunction in interpersonal relationships. Empirically, limited information is available about how narcissism affects observed interactions in romantic relationships. In this study, we employed dyadic data analyses to investigate the effects of narcissism on relationship functioning. Young adult couples (N = 54 couple...

Given that psychopathy is composed in large part by an antagonistic relational approach and is associated with many troubling interpersonally relevant outcomes, its role in romantic functioning warrants greater attention. The current study used data from a community sample of 172 newlywed couples to examine spouses' psychopathic traits in relation...

Prevailing views of marital functioning generally adopt the view that marital problems predict decreases in marital satisfaction, but alternative theoretical perspectives raise the possibility that lowered satisfaction can also predict increases in problems. The current study sought to integrate and compare these perspectives by examining the bidir...

There has been increased interest in and attention to understanding the characteristics associated with relationship satisfaction among same-sex couples. This review examines the individual, couple, and external factors associated with relationship satisfaction among contemporary lesbian couples, highlighting domains such as internalized homophobia...

Despite the relationship of impulsivity with interpersonal dysfunction, including romantic relationship dysfunction, surprisingly little research has examined the degree to which impulsivity predicts how marriages unfold over time. The current study used data from 172 newlywed couples to examine spouses' impulsivity in relation to their 4-year traj...

How can we get the most out of our close relationships? Research in the area of personal relationships continues to grow, but most prior work has emphasized how to overcome negative aspects. This volume demonstrates that a good relationship is more than simply the absence of a bad relationship, and that establishing and maintaining optimal relation...

Prior research has identified associations between alexithymia, psychological symptoms, marital functioning and life satisfaction. However, less is known about the specific dynamics in the interplay of these associations, and other research suggests that such associations may differ depending on gender. The goal of this study is to investigate gend...

The quality of communication between spouses is widely assumed to affect their subsequent judgments of relationship satisfaction, yet this assumption is rarely tested against the alternative prediction that communication is merely a consequence of spouses' prior levels of satisfaction. To evaluate these perspectives, newlywed couples' positivity, n...

Although partners in close social relationships often enable one another to manage stress, stress can also undermine the many benefits that these relationships provide. We review interventions designed to reduce the effects of stress on relationships, distinguishing (a) couple-targeted interventions that aim to build couples’ skills in managing str...