Sheldon Cohen

Carnegie Mellon University | CMU · Department of Psychology

This review highlights consistent patterns in the literature associating positive affect (PA) and physical health. However, it also raises serious conceptual and methodological reservations. Evidence suggests an association of trait PA and lower morbidity and of state and trait PA and decreased symptoms and pain. Trait PA is also associated with in...

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...

In this article, we argued that the term stress has served as a valuable heuristic, helping researchers to integrate traditions that illuminate different stages of the process linking stressful life events to disease. We provided a short history of three traditions in the study of stress: the epidemiological, psychological, and biological. The epid...

After over 70 years of research on the association between stressful life events and health, it is generally accepted that we have a good understanding of the role of stressors in disease risk. In this review, we highlight that knowledge but also emphasize misunderstandings and weaknesses in this literature with the hope of triggering further theor...

For 35 years, our laboratory has been involved in identifying psychosocial factors that predict who becomes ill when they are exposed to a virus affecting the upper respiratory tract. To pursue this question, we used a unique viral-challenge design in which we assessed behavioral, social, and psychological factors in healthy adults. We subsequently...

This study analyzes patterns of physical, mental, lifestyle, and personality factors in college students in different periods over the course of a semester and models their relationships with students’ academic performance. The data analyzed was collected through smartphones and Fitbit. The use of machine learning models derived from the gathered d...

The prevalence of mobile phones and wearable devices enables the passive capturing and modeling of human behavior at an unprecedented resolution and scale. Past research has demonstrated the capability of mobile sensing to model aspects of physical health, mental health, education, and work performance, etc. However, most of the algorithms and mode...

This study analyzes patterns of physical, mental, lifestyle, and personality factors in college students in different periods over the course of a semester and models their relationships with students' academic performance. The data analyzed was collected through smartphones and Fitbit. The use of machine learning models derived from the gathered d...

We present a machine learning approach that uses data from smartphones and fitness trackers of 138 college students to identify students that experienced depressive symptoms at the end of the semester and students whose depressive symptoms worsened over the semester. Our novel approach is a feature extraction technique that allows us to select mean...

This paper presents CoRhythMo, the first computational framework for modeling biobehavioral rhythms - the repeating cycles of physiological, psychological, social, and environmental events - from mobile and wearable data streams. The framework incorporates four main components: mobile data processing, rhythm discovery, rhythm modeling, and machine...

Introduction Sleep is a critical behavior predicting mental health and depressive symptomatology in young adults.The extant scientific literature generally focuses on self-reported sleep measures over relatively short time frames. Here, we examine whether actigraphy-measured sleep variables early in the academic semester predict depressive symptoma...

Objective: There is increasing evidence for an inverse association between the number of social roles (e.g., spouse, friend, and neighbor) we engage in and our risk of disease, especially cardiovascular disease (CVD). Two mechanistic models have been proposed to explain this association. The social integration model refers to a graded association...

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...

Background Growing evidence suggests that sleep plays an important role in immunological memory, including antibody responses to vaccination. However, much of the prior research has been carried out in the laboratory limiting the generalizability of the findings. Furthermore, no study has sought to identify sensitive periods prior to or after vacci...

The rate of depression in college students is rising, which is known to increase suicide risk, lower academic performance and double the likelihood of dropping out of school. Existing work on finding relationships between passively sensed behavior and depression, as well as detecting depression, mainly derives relevant unimodal features from a sing...

Background: There is consistent evidence showing an interplay between psychological processes and immune function in health and disease processes. Objectives: The present systematic review and meta-analysis aims to provide a concise overview of the effectiveness of stress-reducing psychological interventions on the activation of immune responses...

Background Asthma is a common childhood illness with high morbidity and mortality among minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged children. Disparities are not fully accounted for by differences in asthma prevalence, highlighting a need for interventions targeting factors associated with poorer asthma control. One such factor is psychological st...

BACKGROUND Loneliness significantly affects the quality of life and physical and mental health. In addition, recent studies have shown high levels of loneliness across various populations ranging from older adults to college students. Detection of loneliness through passive sensing on personal devices can lead to a better understanding of measurabl...

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)

Resilience is the process that allows individuals to adapt to adverse conditions and recover from them. This process is favored by individual qualities that have been amply studied in the field of stress such as personal control, positive affect, optimism, and social support. Biopsychosocial studies on the individual qualities that promote resilien...

Objectives: We tested the hypothesis that social integration, measured as number of social roles, is associated with less age-related loss of lung function, an important marker of health and longevity. We also investigated possible psychological factors through which social integration might influence lung health. Methods: Data were analyzed fro...

Background: The impact of prenatal ambient air pollution on child asthma may be modified by maternal stress, child sex and exposure dose and timing. Objective: We prospectively examined associations between co-exposure to prenatal particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) and maternal stress on childhood as...

Background: Air pollution exposure in childhood is associated with greater incidence and exacerbation of asthma, particularly in children whose parents report high levels of psychological stress. However, this interaction has not been completely elucidated in pregnancy. Objective: To examine whether the association between prenatal exposure to p...

Rationale: Impact of ambient pollution upon children's asthma may differ by sex, and exposure dose and timing. Psychosocial stress can also modify pollutant effects. These associations have not been examined for in utero ambient nitrate exposure. Objectives: We implemented Bayesian distributed lag interaction models (BDLIMs), to identify sensiti...

Exposure to parental separation or divorce during childhood has been associated with an increased risk for physical morbidity during adulthood. Here we tested the hypothesis that this association is primarily attributable to separated parents who do not communicate with each other. We also examined whether early exposure to separated parents in con...

Background: No prior study has examined associations between prenatal and early-life stress on childhood lung function or identified critical windows of exposure. Objective: To prospectively examine associations between prenatal and early-life stress and childhood lung function. Methods: Stress was indexed by a maternal negative life events (N...

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,...

Objective: To examine whether trait positive and negative affect (PA, NA) moderate the stress-buffering effect of perceived social support on risk for developing a cold subsequent to being exposed to a virus that causes mild upper respiratory illness. Method: Analyses were based on archival data from 694 healthy adults (mean age = 31.0±10.7 year...

Individuals differ consistently in the magnitude of their inflammatory responses to acute stressors, with females often showing larger responses than males. While the clinical significance of these individual differences remains unclear, it may be that greater inflammatory responses relate to increased systemic inflammation and thereby risk for chr...

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...

Diverse aspects of physical, affective, and cognitive health relate to social integration, reflecting engagement in social activities and identification with diverse roles within a social network. However, the mechanisms by which social integration interacts with the brain are unclear. In healthy adults (N=155) we tested the links between social in...

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...

Objective: To determine if negative social interactions are prospectively associated with hypertension among older adults. Method: This is a secondary analysis of data from the 2006 and 2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, a survey of community-dwelling older adults (age > 50 years). Total average negative social interactions were asse...

Objective Analyses test the hypothesis that aspects of social relationships (quantity of ties, social support and social strain) are associated with differences in levels of biological risk across multiple major physiological regulatory systems and consequently overall multi-systems risk (i.e., allostatic load [AL]). Methods Data are from the Coro...

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...

Prenatal exposures to stress and physical toxins influence children's respiratory health, although few studies consider these factors together. We sought to concurrently examine the effects of prenatal community-level psychosocial (exposure to community violence [ECV]) and physical (air pollution) stressors on repeated wheeze in 708 urban children...

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...

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether volunteerism is prospectively associated with hypertension risk among older adults. Participants provided data during the 2006 and 2010 waves of the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal panel survey using a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling older adults (age > 50...

Rationale: Exploring prenatal factors influencing childhood wheeze may inform programming mechanisms. Objectives: We examined associations among prenatal maternal cortisol profiles, maternal obesity, and repeated wheeze up to age 2 years (n = 261). Methods: Salivary cortisol was collected five times per day over 3 days at 29.0 ± 4.9 weeks gest...

Rumination, or repetitive, past-oriented unwanted thinking, has been shown to be related to cortisol recovery after an experimental stressor. However, no one has investigated the role of ruminative tendencies on diurnal cortisol levels. This study explores the association between rumination, as well as post-stress contemplation (different from rumi...

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...

Experimental evidence links poor sleep with susceptibility to infectious illness; however, it remains to be determined if naturally occurring sleep is associated with immune responses known to play a role in protection against infection. The aim of this study was to determine whether sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and sleep quality, assessed in...

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...

To determine whether parenthood predicts host resistance to the common cold among healthy volunteers experimentally exposed to a common cold virus. Participants were 795 healthy volunteers (age range = 18-55 years) enrolled in one of three viral-challenge studies conducted from 1993 to 2004. After reporting parenthood status, participants were quar...

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...

Critical periods for programming early wheeze risk may include pregnancy and infancy. Effects of timing remain poorly understood. Associations among prenatal and postnatal maternal stress and children's wheeze were prospectively examined in 653 families. Effect modification by maternal sensitization was also examined. Stress was indexed by a matern...

Reports an error in "Positive emotion word use and longevity in famous deceased psychologists" by Sarah D. Pressman and Sheldon Cohen (Health Psychology, Advanced Online Publication, Sep 19, 2011, np). The bars in Figure 2 were mislabeled. The black bars should have been labeled the “Used” words category and the grey bars should have been labeled a...

Prenatal exposure to both stress and aeroallergens (dust mite) may modulate the fetal immune system. These exposures may interact to affect the newborn immune response. We examined associations between prenatal maternal stress and cord blood total IgE in 403 predominately low-income minority infants enrolled in the Asthma Coalition on Community, En...

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...

This study examined whether specific types of positive and negative emotional words used in the autobiographies of well-known deceased psychologists were associated with longevity. For each of the 88 psychologists, the percent of emotional words used in writing was calculated and categorized by valence (positive or negative) and arousal (activated...

Few studies have investigated the association of socioeconomic status (SES) and coronary artery calcification (CAC) and only one study has examined African Americans separately from Caucasians, despite empirical evidence suggesting that blacks have equivalent or lower CAC, relative to whites.We tested the hypotheses that lower childhood SES and low...

Independent of current socioeconomic status (SES), past maternal SES might influence asthma outcomes in children. We examined associations among the mother's SES in the first 10 years of her life (maternal childhood SES), increased cord blood IgE levels (upper 20% [1.37 IU/mL]), and repeated wheeze (≥ 2 episodes by age 2 years) in an urban pregnanc...

It is proposed that socioeconomic conditions in early childhood effect immune programming, with poorer conditions resulting in adult phenotypes that are prone to inflammation. Recent evidence supports this possibility, showing an inverse association of childhood SES with adult markers of systemic inflammation. In this study, we further investigate...

Evidence supports a bidirectional relationship between stress and asthma exacerbations in children, suggesting that interventions to reduce stress may improve both psychosocial quality of life and disease course. Here, we examine the feasibility of a stress management intervention for 7- to 12-year-olds with asthma. Two trials were conducted. Cohor...

Laboratory studies show that individuals differ appreciably in the magnitude of their inflammatory responses to acute psychological stress. These individual differences are poorly understood, yet may contribute to variation in stress-associated disease vulnerability. The present study examined the possibility that affective responses to acute stres...

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...

While adult hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis functioning is thought to be altered by traumatic experiences, little data exist on the effects of cumulative stress on HPA functioning among pregnant women or among specific racial/ethnic groups. The goal of this study was to explore the effects of multiple social stressors on HPA axis f...

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...

Disparities by socioeconomic status (SES) are seen for numerous mental and physical illnesses, and yet understanding of the pathways to health disparities is limited. We tested whether SES alters longitudinal trajectories of cortisol output and what types of psychosocial factors could account for these links. Fifty healthy children collected saliva...

In adults and children with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection, a polymorphism in the interleukin 6 (IL-6) promoter at position -174 predicts illness magnitude. In addition, polymorphisms in the interleukin 10 (IL-10), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), and interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) genes are associated with immune responsiveness...