Howard S. Friedman’s research while affiliated with University of California, Riverside and other places

Education research has shown that instructor gestures can help capture, maintain, and direct the student’s attention during a lecture as well as enhance learning and retention. Traditional education research on instructor gestures relies on video stimuli, which are time consuming to produce, especially when gesture precision and consistency across conditions are strictly enforced. The proposed system allows users to efficiently create accurate and effective stimuli for complex studies on gesture, without the need for computer animation expertise or artist talent.

A beneficial effect of gesture on learning has been demonstrated in multiple domains, including mathematics, science, and foreign language vocabulary. However, because gesture is known to co-vary with other non-verbal behaviors, including eye gaze and prosody along with face, lip, and body movements, it is possible the beneficial effect of gesture is instead attributable to these other behaviors. We used a computer-generated animated pedagogical agent to control both verbal and non-verbal behavior. Children viewed lessons on mathematical equivalence in which an avatar either gestured or did not gesture, while eye gaze, head position, and lip movements remained identical across gesture conditions. Children who observed the gesturing avatar learned more, and they solved problems more quickly. Moreover, those children who learned were more likely to transfer and generalize their knowledge. These findings provide converging evidence that gesture facilitates math learning, and they reveal the potential for using technology to study non-verbal behavior in controlled experiments.

The Genetic Studies of Genius study, begun by Lewis Terman in 1921, is the longest running continuous psychological investigation. Recruitment through 1928 yielded a final sample of 1,528 Californian children of high intelligence. The participants have been studied and surveyed about their personalities, education, careers, successes, marriages, families, and well-being every 5–10 years throughout life. The results reveal that, even within an intelligent sample, psychological and social characteristics interact with the environment to set individuals on lifelong pathways toward health and thriving, or toward illness and stagnation throughout the lifespan.

Research in the 1980s suggested that young “metalheads” were at risk for poor developmental outcomes. No other study has assessed this group as adults; thus, we examined 1980s heavy metal groupies, musicians, and fans at middle age, using snowball sampling from Facebook. Online surveys assessed adverse childhood experiences, personality, adult attachment, and past and current functioning in 377 participants. Results revealed that metal enthusiasts did often experience traumatic and risky “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” lives. However, the “metalhead” identity also served as a protective factor against negative outcomes. They were significantly happier in their youth and better adjusted currently than either middle-aged or current college-age youth comparison groups. Thus, participation in fringe style cultures may enhance identity development in troubled youth.

Although previous research has shown personality and sleep are each substantial predictors of health throughout the lifespan, little is known about links between personality and healthy sleep patterns. This study examined Big Five personality traits and a range of factors related to sleep health in 436 university students (Mage = 19.88, SD = 1.50, 50% Male). Valid self-report measures of personality, chronotype, sleep hygiene, sleep quality, and sleepiness were analyzed. To remove multicollinearity between personality factors, each sleep domain was regressed on relevant demographic and principal component-derived personality factors in multiple linear regressions. Results showed that low conscientiousness and high neuroticism were the best predictors of poor sleep (poor sleep hygiene, low sleep quality, and increased sleepiness), consistent with other research on predictors of poor health and mortality risk. In this first comprehensive study of the topic, the findings suggest that personality has a significant association with sleep health, and researchers could profitably examine both personality and sleep in models of health and well-being.

Objective: Sleep duration is known to significantly affect health in adults and children, but little is understood about long-term associations. This prospective cohort study is the first to examine whether childhood sleep duration is associated with lifelong mortality risk. Method: Data from childhood were refined and mortality data collected for 1,145 participants from the Terman Life Cycle Study. Participants were born between 1904 and 1915, lived to at least 1940, and had complete age, bedtime, and waketime data at initial data collection (1917-1926). Homogeneity of the cohort sample (intelligent, mostly White) limits generality but provides natural control of common confounds. Through 2009, 1,039 participants had confirmed deaths. Sleep duration was calculated as the difference between each child's bed and wake times. Age-adjusted sleep (deviation from that predicted by age) was computed. Cox proportional hazards survival models evaluated childhood sleep duration as a predictor of mortality separately by sex, controlling for baseline age. Results: For males, a quadratic relation emerged: Male children who underslept or overslept compared with peers were at increased risk of lifelong all-cause mortality (HR = 1.15, CIs [1.05, 1.27]). Effect sizes were smaller and nonsignificant in females (HR = 1.02, CIs [0.91, 1.14]). Conclusions: Male children with shorter or longer sleep durations than expected for their age were at increased risk of death at any given age in adulthood. The findings suggest that sleep may be a core biobehavioral trait, with implications for new models of sleep and health throughout the entire life span.

Groupies, heavy metal musicians, and highly devoted fans (metalheads) were some of the most salient identity groups for teenagers and emerging adults in the 1980s—the tail end of the Baby Boom and the beginning of the newly emerging Generation X. Met with appalled reactions from conventional society, the heavy metal scene nevertheless appeared to help at least some disenchanted youth nego-tiate turbulent times. The present study of 144 middle-aged 1980s groupies, metal fans, and professional musicians used both quantitative and qualitative data to develop insights into the developmental processes of these emerging adults of the 1980s. Metalheads described their childhood experiences, including maltreatment, their sexual and substance use activities in the 1980s, identity issues, and reported on current indicators of adjustment, such as education, mental health, and happiness. The results confirm that youth involved in the metal scene had high rates of sub-stance use, risky sexual behaviors, and especially for groupies, traumatic childhood experiences, as well as drug dependence and sexual violence during their groupie days. However, despite their trauma and risky behaviors, participants were able to thrive and develop healthy adult lives, from which they look back fondly on those 1980s experiences. The richness of these data provide insights into the search for identity for marginalized youth, and provide hypotheses for future research on the understudied developmental processes of such adolescent style cultures.

A lifespan perspective on personality and health uncovers new causal pathways and provides a deeper, more nuanced approach to interventions. It is unproven that happiness is a direct cause of good health or that negative emotion, worry, and depression are significant direct causes of disease. Instead, depression-related characteristics are likely often reflective of an already-deteriorating trajectory. It is also unproven that challenging work in a demanding environment usually brings long-term health risks; on the contrary, individual strivings for accomplishment and persistent dedication to one's career or community often are associated with sizeable health benefits. Overall, a substantial body of recent research reveals that conscientiousness plays a very significant role in health, with implications across the lifespan. Much more caution is warranted before policy makers offer narrow health recommendations based on short-term or correlational findings. Attention should be shifted to individual trajectories and pathways to health and well-being.

Building upon decades of research with the lifelong (nine-decade) Terman Life Cycle Study, we present a life pathway model for understanding human thriving that accounts for long-term individual difference in health and longevity, with a particular focus on child personality and adult social relationships. Developing data derived and supplemented from the Terman Study (N=570 males, 451 females), we employed regression and survival analyses to test models of childhood personality predicting adult psychosocial factors (subjective well-being, family relationships, community involvement, subjective achievement, hardships) and subsequent longevity. Child personality differentially related to midlife social relationships, well-being, and hardships. Conscientiousness and good social relationships predicted longer life, whereas subjective well-being was unrelated to mortality risk. Examining multiple life factors across long time periods uncovers important pathways through which personality relates to premature mortality or longevity. Typical stress-and-illness models are untenable and should be replaced with life-span trajectory approaches.