NEWS
2021
Lab News Has Moved to Science Twitter
Stay tuned for recent lab news and updates on Dr. Gruber's science twitter account. You can follow recent publications, projects, events, discussions, and updates of the lab below. You can also check out the other Twitter accounts we follow to stay on top of other recent updates in clinical, affective and psychological science more generally.
https://twitter.com/junegruber
2020
UROP Summer Fellowship Awarded to Reid Boyce
Congratulations to Reid Boyce for successfully being awarded a 2020 Individual UROP Grants. He will use these funds to support his work examining the behavioral, physiological and neural bases of empathic accuracy among adults with bipolar disorder, depression, and continue his involvement in ongoing work on emotion and mental health in emerging adults during the transition to college.
Read More about UROP »
Congrats on Senior Thesis Defenses!
Congratulations to Montana Ploe, Lizzie Hoelscher and Rachel Karasik for successfully defending their senior honors theses! Montana's thesis was titled "Another Side of Psychopathy: Associations with Reward Dysregulation and Social Connection in Emerging Adults", Lizzie's thesis was titled "Emotion-Related Impulsivity and Bipolar Disorder Risk in First-Year College Students" and Rachel's thesis was titled "Associations between Social Media Engagement with Depressive Symptoms and Social Support in First-Year College Students". <
UROP Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award
Dr. Gruber received the 2020 UROP Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award which recognizes CU Boulder faculty members for their role mentoring current undergraduates working on research, scholarly and creative projects in any major. Dr. Gruber was nominated by student mentees Elizabeth Hoelscher and Montana Ploe whose letters of support noted: "Dr. June Gruber makes exceptional efforts to foster a collaborative environment across labs and disciplines. Not only does she provide students with support for opportunities they present to her, but she also seeks them out on their behalf...She strives to individualize research training and tasks in her lab to cater to the needs of all members—and regularly asks for feedback on her performance as a mentor...Dr. Gruber pushed us to pursue research in a way we didn’t think possible. Our love for psychological, clinical and affective science is due to her dedication and support."
More Information »
2019
NARSAD Grant Awarded
Dr. Gruber received the 2019 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. The NARSAD Young Investigator Grant provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research. These funds will support the PEP lab's current work on examining affective mechanisms that underlie emotion regulation in emerging adults at risk for mood difficulties during the transition to college."
More Information »
Four Individual UROP Grants Awarded
Congratulations to Montana Ploe, Lizzie Hoelscher, Rachel Karasik, and Heather Brown for successfully being awarded 2019 Individual UROP Grants. They will use these funds to support their senior thesis projects examining emotion and mental health in emerging adults during the transition to college. Project topics include examining emotion-relevant impulsivity and bipolar risk, mood symptoms and social media use, reward sensitivity and psychopathy, and executive functioning difficulties and mood disturbance.
Read More about UROP »
Using Research to Improve Mentoring
We can all grow to be better mentors — here’s 3 research based lessons to improve student mentoring by Jay Van Bavel, Leah Somerville, Neil Lewis Jr.& June Gruber. Article notes: "Becoming a better mentor should be a central concern for new faculty members starting their own labs, but also for graduate students and postdocs mentoring research assistants—and even for more senior faculty members who are continually striving to improve their mentoring. Our capacity for growth as mentors is a lifelong journey....
Read More:
https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/03/three-research-based-lessons-improve-your-mentoring?
How Can Psychology Create a Better World?
Dr. Gruber co-edits special issue for Perspectives on Psychological Science on how Psychology can create a healthier, happier, and more sustainable world. This special issue is devoted to highlighting the ways that psychological scientists are currently applying their knowledge and skills to make the world a better place. By highlighting what has been done already, we seek to pave the way for broad discussions and generative insights as to what (else) can be done looking ahead. The special issue includes more than 20 renowned psychological scientists whose expertise covers a diverse array of theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches. Their work spans ways to make the world a better place by considering individuals, relationships and interactions among people, and broadscale social and national policies.
Read More:
https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/pps/current
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-01-psychological-science-benefiting-world.html
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/psychological-science-benefiting-the-world.html
Research Mentoring Opportunities for Women in Psychology: Apply Now!
Women make up a large – and growing – proportion of today's neuroscientists and psychological scientists. Yet, despite the fact that women earn most of doctoral degrees in psychology, less than half of psychology faculty are women (American Psychological Association, Committee on Women in Psychology, 2017).It is critical to provide research and mentoring opportunities for women in neuroscience and psychological science, and to enable women from underprivileged backgrounds to advance in science, we need to support and create funded research opportunities early on at the undergraduate level. The Women's Affective Science Institute (WASI) is a one-day workshop for undergraduate women located at the University of Colorado Boulder. The one-day WASI workshop will take place 9:00AM - 5:00PM on Friday April 19th.
Apply Here: http://gruberpeplab.com/WASI/
PEP lab canine ambassador and Prof. Gruber in the Daily Camera
The daily camera interviews Prof. Gruber in ways to be "happier" in 2019. Article excerpt: "June Gruber, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, has been studying the science behind happiness since she was an undergraduate student at the University of California Berkeley....After finding very little research on the "potential downsides of positive feelings," Gruber decided to focus on that issue in her own work. She now researches positive emotions at her CU lab, the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology lab. Through her research, Gruber has found that the so-called "pursuit of happiness" that is highly valued in our society can actually be "paradoxical" in nature, she said. In a collaboration with professors at other universities, Gruber found that "the more we specifically prioritize being happy as the goal in and of itself, we may be inadvertently setting ourselves up for feeling unhappy and at greater risk for mental health difficulties...."
Full Article: http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_32366072/happier-2019-stop-focusing-happiness-cu-boulder-professor
Featured in the Denver Post: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/07/mental-health-happiness-cu-boulder/
Coloradan features PEP Lab work in Cover Story
The Coloradan cover story features work by the PEP lab and quotes lab manager Cynthia Villanueva in discussing work on "The Flip Side of Happiness." Article excerpt: "...Gruber contends that positive emotions deserve the serious scrutiny psychologists have given anger, sadness and other unpleasant feelings. After all, one in six Americans are taking antidepressants, and positive psychology self-help books still flood the shelves.
"It may be time for some recalibrating," she said...."American culture is all about the pursuit of happiness," Gruber said, seated in her pastel-hued office near a shelf crammed with self-help books like The How of Happiness and The Happiness Project. "It is framed as the purpose for which we are here — this thing that we all should aspire toward. But our research shows there are caveats."
Full Article: https://www.colorado.edu/coloradan/2018/12/01/psychology-happiness-june-gruber
2018
EMERGE Study Launches
The PEP lab launches the "Examining Milestones Emotion Regulation, Growth & EDucation (EMERGE)" Project at CU Boulder. ecent research suggests an alarming increase in the rate of mental health challenges, substance use problems, and behavioral difficulties among college-aged adults. The World Health Organization reports that 1 out of 3 college students meet criteria for psychiatric problems and the National Survey from the Association for University and Counseling Center Directors surveys indicate that up to 44% of college students report seeking help for adjustment issues. There is hence a critical need to prioritize research that helps better understand adjustment difficulties during college and translate this information to enhance student well-being and success. The EMERGE project aims to examine multiple aspects of emotional health, decision-making, and academic performance in CU students over the first year of college. In partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Education, the University Exploration and Advising Center, the Center for STEM Learning, the College of A&S Academic Advising Center, and the Office of Data Analytics at CU Boulder we aim to study the incoming Freshmen CU cohort and follow them over the first year of college.
EMERGE Project Website: http://gruberpeplab.com/emerge-project/
EMERGE Project in the News: https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2018/11/14/prof-seeks-volunteers-study-freshmen-depression
APA's #ThankAScientist Week Features Prof. Gruber
The American Psychological Association is leading the "Thank A Scientist" campaign. Last year, more than 100 scientific, educational, and health organizations joined to say "Thank you!" to researchers for the work they do. Follow the hashtag #ThankAScientist all week to learn about cutting-edge research and the impact it has on our lives. Prof. Gruber included in APA's group of featured scientists for 2018.
Read More Here: https://www.apa.org/science/programs/thank-scientist/index.aspx
Prof. Gruber's classroom teaching featured on engaging students in science outreach
CU Psychology and Neuroscience Assistant Professor June Gruber (Clinical) was in the news, with an article appearing in the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about two psychology classes she taught this past semester. The classes, Human Emotion and Abnormal Psychology, were taught as part of CU Boulder's Making Teaching Learning and Visible Project. This project encourages the sharing of ideas among faculty participants about innovative techniques to use in the classroom. Read more about the program and how it impacted these classes in the
A&S Magazine article.
Featured in Denver Channel 9 News.
See PDF here.
Dr. Gruber recently featured on The Guardian's weekly science podcast
CU Psychology and Neuroscience Assistant Professor June Gruber (Clinical) was in the popular media, participating in a discussion about the dark side of happiness for The Guardian's Science Weekly podcast.
Listen to the podcast here (she comes in at approximately the 16:20 mark).
CU psychology class students create public service announcement for class project
Three CU students created a public service announcement (PSA) about the language commonly used regarding mental illness as part of a class project for their Abnormal Psychology class taught by CU Psychology and Neuroscience Assistant Professor June Gruber (Clinical). The PSA, published on YouTube, points out the stigmatizing effects of the casual use of words like "schizo" and "psycho." Read more about their project in the Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine article on the subject, where you can also find a link to their PSA on YouTube.
See PDF here.
Lara Wieland receives ECN scholarship
Lara Wieland received a four-year fellowship from the Einstein Center for Neurosciences (ECN) and will pursue a PhD on social cognition and schizophrenia. Research at the ECN is spanning from synapse to behavior, molecule to disease, and brain to mind in 100 internationally recognized research groups, funded by Einstein Foundation Berlin and jointly supported by the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Technische Universität Berlin. Congrats Lara!
Emily Burr Gets New Position at Rutgers
Emily Burr will be moving to Rutgers University to begin a position as Lab Manager in their new Emotion, Health, and Behavior lab under Dr. Samantha Farris. She will be overseeing projects that mainly have to do with the relationship between poor emotional coping and maladaptive behaviors. She will miss everyone but is looking forward to the opportunity to apply what she's learned in the PEP lab back on the east coast! Congrats Emily!
Zach Anderson Gets New Position in CANLAB
Zach recently was offered a full-time position in Dr. Tor Wager's Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Congrats Zach! Zach will be involved in a series of projects which focus on uncovering neural representations related to pain and how effective certain mind body treatments are at resolving chronic pain. These projects will use a wide range of outcome measures including fMRI, EEG, pulse rate, respiration rate, immune markers obtained through blood draws, and various behavioral tasks to explore how and why pain becomes chronic and what mechanisms are at play in the resolution of chronic pain. Congrats Zach!
Congrats Marianne Reddan!
Marianne Reddan awarded Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant Award to support her project "Training Empathy and Understanding: The Development and Application of Integrative Computational Models of Emotion Inference." The aim of her project (with Dr. June Gruber, Tor Wager and Jamil Zaki) is to better understand the neural processes that allow individuals to successfully infer the emotions of people around them by developing advanced multi-modal computational models of brain activity and
behavior. In addition, she will apply these models in psychiatric populations in order to understand how abnormalities of emotional inference contribute to mood disorders. Congrats Marianne!
Five Improvements to Improve Mental Health Care in Slate
Dr. June Gruber and Dr. Darby Saxbe (Professor at USC) co-authored an article for Slate on the importance of addressing gaps in our mental health care system. Article excerpt: “As two clinical psychologists, we ought to be thrilled when public conversations draw attention to mental health. After all, mental health problems tend to be under-researched, undertreated, and overstigmatized…”.
Read Article»
Fostering emotional diversity in boys featured in Scientific American
Dr. June Gruber and Dr. Jessica Borelli (Professor at UC Irvine) co-authored an article for Scientific American’s Mind Matters on the importance of fostering emotional diversity in boys. Article excerpt: “If having lots of different emotions is good for our health as adults, then shouldn't we be fostering the experience of a diverse range of emotions in young children as well? And yet the research suggests we are not fostering emotional diversity from a young age, especially when it comes to raising young boys…”.
Read Article»
Sunny Dutra accepts Assistant Professor position
Former (and first) graduate student of the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology Laboratory Dr. Sunny Dutra has officially accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at William James College. During her time in the PEP lab Sunny’s work adopted an affective clinical neuroscience approach to examine social and monetary reward processing in adults with bipolar disorder. Congratulations Sunny!!
2017
Dacher Keltner and June Gruber on WHYY Radio
Dacher Keltner of UC Berkeley (Professor and Director of the Greater Good Science Center) and June Gruber of CU Boulder were interviewed by Dr. Dan Gottlieb’s Voices in the Family Special on Happiness on WHYY Radio. The segment focused on the science of happiness and how happiness can be taught. Listen to full radio show below:
Voices in the Family Special on Happiness »
Stephanie Yu Awarded BSI Scholar Grant
Stephanie was awarded a BSI Scholar Grant to work on her thesis examining emotional diversity and associations with treatment efficacy in mood disorders! The BSI Scholars program provides funding for undergraduates doing STEM research and is funded in large part through a grant by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Stephanie will receive a $2500 stipend and she will attend seminars throughout the year and present her research at the end of the year. Congrats Stephanie!
R01 Awarded with Jamil Zaki
The PEP lab is part of a recently funded NIH R01 grant on ""Computational and brain predictors of emotion cue integration". Jami Zaki at Stanford University is the primary PI, and June Gruber and Tor Wager are the CU Boulder subcontract coordinators. The major goals of this project are to build computational models of naturalistic emotion perception, and to examine brain signatures of emotion cue integration in healthy and mood disordered subjects. Stay tuned!
Gruber Named Associate Editor
Dr. Gruber was recently elected as an incoming Associate Editor for the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science was named a Rising Star in the field of Psychiatry/Psychology. Its current record in this field includes 227 papers cited a total of 2,020 times. Check out the journal below:
Perspectives on Psychological Science »
2016
June Gruber named APS Fellow
Fellow status is awarded to APS Members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service and/or application.Fellow status is typically awarded for one’s scientific contributions, but may also be awarded for exceptional contributions to the field through the development of research opportunities and settings.
Read more about APS Fellows »
Congrats to Former Grad Student Sunny Dutra!
Former graduate student Sunny Dutra interviewed by Student Newsletter for Society for Research in Psychopathology (SRP) on her winning the prestigious Smadar Levin Award. In the interview Sunny describes her career path in clinical science and mentorship with Dr. Gruber.
Read Interview »
Lab work featured in The Atlantic
Work in the lab on the importance of emotional diversity over the prioritization of positive emotions in predicting optimal mental health outcomes featured in the Atlantic. Interview excerpt: “Other research suggests that the key to well-being is not feeling positive emotions more often than negative emotions, or trying to turn negativity into positivity, but rather feeling a wide variety of emotions, a concept that June Gruber, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, calls “emodiversity.” Much like biodiversity (an abundance of different species of plants and animals) makes an environment resilient, emodiversity appears to make one’s internal environment resilient, too. She’s found that people with greater emodiversity have better physical and mental health. “They actually fared worse if they had an imbalance of negative emotions at the expense of positive or positive at the expense of negative,” she says…”
Read Article »
Misunderstanding Positive Emotion
June Gruber interviewed by John Brockman at Edge.org about Misunderstanding Positive Emotion. Interview excerpt: “One of the biggest questions I've been asking myself is why positive emotions have been so deeply neglected, particularly in the understanding of mental illness. I think of this as the neglected role of positive emotions. We know a lot about negative emotions in psychopathology, which has been important in getting to the root of disorders such as anxiety, substance abuse, and depression. This knowledge has been effectively disseminated in order to develop etiological models and create effective treatment. We know far less about the role of positive emotions in human health and also human dysfunction, which is one of the biggest questions that I've been trying to tackle lately. It's not a trivial question…”
Watch Interview »
Colorado Affective Sciences Laboratories Featured!
”Human emotions are universally experienced but not fully understood. A new initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder aims to tap a wide range of expertise to shed light on the mysteries of human nature…That quest underlies a new initiative that employs an interdisciplinary approach to understanding emotion, called Colorado Affective Sciences Laboratories…”
Full Article »
Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine Interviews June Gruber
From Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine: “At some point in your life you’ve likely heard that “too much of a good thing” can be bad for you.June Gruber has used science to prove this old adage true. Gruber, a professor of psychology and neuropsychology at the University of Colorado Boulder, studies emotional extremes and the upper limits of human positivity. Leaders in her field are taking note of Gruber’s groundbreaking research.Gruber was recently honored as a 2016 recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. The award lauds “the creativity and innovative work of scientists who represent the future promise and potential of psychological science.” And, she was invited to present her research on emotional extremes recently at the 17th annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in San Diego, California.We wanted to know more about Gruber’s research so we asked her some questions…”
Full Article »
June Gruber receives APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions
APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recognizes transformative early career contributions to psychological science. The APS recognized psychological scientists “pushing the limits of their field” in various ways, such as the establishment of new approaches or paradigms within a field of psychology, or the development or advancement of research that cuts across fields of psychological science.
Award Winners Here »
Congrats Sunny!
Sunny Dutra, PEP lab graduate student alumni has accepted a post-doctoral research fellowship within the Behavioral Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston. Her primary mentor will be Brian Marx, Ph.D., and she will be working on reward-related mechanisms of PTSD and implications for treatment. Sunny’s broad research interests are centered on understanding the pathophysiology of reward and emotion processing dysfunctions. Her dissertation research in the PEP lab investigated the neural basis, as well as physiological, behavioral and clinical correlates of these dysfunctions in patients with Bipolar Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder.
Edge Annual Question
June Gruber included among 200 scientists invited to responds to Edge.Org’s Annual Question: “What do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news?” June writes about how emotions influence environmental well-being, stating: “We know that emotions can influence individual well-being. Indeed, scientific progress has unveiled how human emotions—from exuberance to sorrow and even compassion—can optimize as well as hinder individual-level health outcomes. Across numerous studies we see that the intensity and flexibility of our emotions has robust effects on a wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal well-being outcomes for the individual person. Furthermore, an optimal diversity of (both positive and negative) emotional experiences in everyday life promotes greater subjective well-being and decreased psychopathology symptoms. But are the effects of emotion on well-being specific to these types of individual-level outcomes?…” [Read More]
2015
The “7 S’s” of Positive Emotion Disturbance
The PEP lab’s work featured in American Psychological Association’s Science Brief on the “Emerging Themes of Positive Emotion Disturbance.” Article reviews emerging work on positive emotion disturbance thematically using seven key themes that encompass key positive emotion processes likely to play roles in emotion disturbance.
Full article»
Gruber featured in Science Vs Podcast
Work by June Gruber and colleagues on the science of happiness featured in Science Vs Podcast by Wendy Zukerman who describes the podcast: “We are often told that we can be happy, if we try hard enough. By shifting our mindset, changing our lifestyles, or even writing a gratitude journal – happiness is waiting for all of us! But, what does science say?”
Podcast»
New Templeton Grant
June Gruber and Sona Dimidjian receive a generous grant from The Templeton Foundation through the Experience Project at the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill! This project will utilize a mixed methods approach, incorporating self-report questionnaires, standardized emotion-relevant laboratory measures, experience sampling, and in-depth interviews to address the extent to which transformative life experiences transform self-oriented and other-oriented positive emotion processes, as well as identifying distinct trajectories associated with personal and social well-being.
The Experience Project»
Congrats Anny!
Anny Dow awarded Psi Chi Undergraduate Research Grant and a Mellon Undergraduate Research Grant for her senior thesis project entitled “The Emotional Marketplace.” Anny will used this funding to support data collection for this project in the coming academic year, co-advised by Gregory Samanez-Larkin at Yale University and June Gruber. Anny’s senior thesis will investigate how much utility people get from different emotional experiences, the degree to which their stated preferences are consistent with past work on the expected influence of specific emotions on global well-being, and how preferences interact with other factors such as age, mania history, and temporal discounting.
SAS Positive Emotions Pre-Conference!
The 2nd Annual Positive Emotions Pre-Conference will be held prior to the Society for Affective Sciences (SAS) Meeting on April 9, 2015 in Oakland, CA. We have an outstanding line-up of leaders in the field this year, including: Dacher Keltner, Charles Carver, Jeanne Tsai, Robert Levenson, Iris Mauss, Jamil Zaki, Greg Siegle, Pranj Mehta, Derek Isaacowitz, Tessa West, with closing remarks by Barbara Fredrickson.
Pre-Conference Information»
Gaia Cooper wins UROP Summer Award
Senior thesis student Gaia Cooper receives prestigious $2,400 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Summer Award through the University of Colorado Boulder to work in the PEP lab on her senior thesis project. Gaia will be focusing on emotional memory among adults diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Congrats Gaia!
Why Happy People Aren’t Empathetic as They Think
Forbes magazine features work by PEP Lab Grad Student Hillary Devlin and collaborators Jamil Zaki and Desmond Ong at Stanford, on “Why Happy People Aren’t as Empathetic as They Think.” Forbes states: “A new study investigated the claim and found that feeling positive doesn’t make you any better at empathy than others, and in some ways it’s a handicap….”
Forbes Article»
Positive Emotion Linked to Cooperation
Yale Daily News features recent work published in PLOS One by June Gruber and David Rand examining associations between positive emotion, inhibition and cooperative behavior. Reporters note: “Making use of data from 4,218 adult U.S. residents who participated in nine different social dilemma studies, as well as a smaller study involving 236 subjects, the research found that positive emotions — feelings of gratitude, for instance — promote cooperation, whereas self-control significantly reduces cooperation.”
Yale Daily News Article»
Congrats Kirsten!
Grad student alumni Kirsten Gilbert awarded NIHM T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Developmental Neuroscience and Child Psychopathology at Washington University in St. Louis, where she will be working with Dr. Deanna Barch. The fellowship will focus on interdisciplinary training, with trainees gaining expertise in both basic and clinical domains, including developmental psychopathology, developmental affective and cognitive neuroscience, genetics and developmental neuroimaging.
2014 and earlier
Wall Street Journal Features Postdoc Keith Welker
WSJ features recent work by Keith Welker on links between facial-width-to-height ratio with socially dominant and aggressive behavior. The article notes: “Studies of men have associated broader faces with aggression, unethical behavior and a greater willingness to express prejudice—as well as success in the role of chief executive. Now, it seems, the same factor can predict performance on the soccer field. And the likely explanation is testosterone. Researchers at the University of Colorado, Wayne State University in Michigan and Nipissing University in Ontario studied player statistics from 32 national teams competing in the 2010 World Cup…”
WSJArticle»
Comedian Shane Moss Interviews June Gruber
Comedian Shane Mauss interviews science experts across the country in a journey to find out what makes us who we are. In one of his interviews, he speaks with June Gruber about facial recognition of emotions, emotion elicitation and regulation, as well as the evolution of emotion. Shane Mauss notes: “This episode really stuck with me. I found myself thinking back on some of the ideas we discussed for weeks afterwards. There were so many topics we could have spent the whole episode talking about. This one is highly representative of what I envisioned the podcast being when I started this project.”
Listen to Podcast»
Download Podcast»
CASL Series Launches!
The Colorado Affective Sciences Laboratories ("CASL") series launches in September 2014, founded by June Gruber, Tor Wager, & Leaf Van Boven, with the goal of bringing together people interested in affective science. CASL series consists of monthly meetings that will bring together affective scientists broadly from the Colorado area. During these meetings the "host lab" will have the opportunity to share recent discoveries and seek input, brainstorm new project ideas, discuss readings of interest, and seek collaborative input from the group. Faculty, postdocs grad students and exceptional RAs are encouraged to attend.
CASL Webpage»
SSCP Features 5 W’s of Becoming a Clinical Scientist
The Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP) invites June Gruber to provide advice for graduate students on becoming clinical psychologist. Read here her article for the Fall 2014 issue of the SSCP Newsletter, Clinical Science, “The 5 W’s of Becoming a Clinical Scientist.”
SSCP Article»
Huffington Post interviews June Gruber
June Gruber, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder joined HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani to discuss some of the key ingredients we need to be happier. “Happiness has a few key ingredients; it’s not one single thing," said Gruber. "There’s feelings, thoughts, behaviors and even the way our body responds." Asked to discuss how people can measure happiness in their everyday lives, Gruber highlighted a common mistake people make in their search for fulfillment.“If your spotlight is so strongly focused on how you can become happy, that actually backfires, paradoxically, and people report feeling less happy the more they try to pursue it,” explained Gruber. “Don’t focus on the pursuit of happiness; focus on other people, things you’re grateful for and doing things for others as opposed [for] yourself.”
Huffington Post Interview»
WIRED features article by June Gruber on Pursuit of Happiness
The pursuit of happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be:Aristotle claimed that "happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence." And for good reason. Scientists are only now beginning to catch up with Aristotle's early observations about human wellbeing, with recent discoveries pointing to the benefits of positive feelings: they motivate us to pursue goals, broaden our scope of attention, buffer against the effects of stress and even stave off illness. Further benefits of experiencing and promoting feelings centered on the wellbeing of others, such as compassion and gratitude, demonstrate robust benefits for our social relationships and even neural health. So it seems, for all intents and purposes, we should want to feel happiness and its related varieties of positivity, correct?
WIRED Full Article»
Oxford University Press publishes Positive Emotion Volume
June Gruber and Judith Moskowitz co-edited published volume on positive emotion. Description here: “Gruber and Moskowitz propose that the field is now ripe to consider the costs, and not just the benefits, of positive emotion. This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of this phenomenon. It offers a comprehensive summary of current theoretical and empirical work on positive emotion and provides empirical examples of the 'light side' or adaptive benefits of positive emotion according to the degree, context (health, social relationships, coping), and type of adaptive outcome. It also provides empirical examples of the 'dark side' or maladaptive aspects of positive emotion organized according to the degree, context, type and reasons for pursuing positive emotion in healthy and clinical populations. It discusses therapeutic applications regarding how to cultivate and foster healthy positive emotion, and suggests future research to better understand the nature of positive emotion.”
Purchase Book Here»
Yale Scientific reports article on “The tinted lens of positive emotion.”
”Imagine seeing life through rose-colored glasses. At first, you might think that the world is uncharacteristically pink, but over time, your experiences and perceptions of everything around you are sure to change. This phenomenon is exactly what Yale Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. June Gruber investigated in her study on mania. An abnormally elated mental state, mania is often characterized by feelings of euphoria, lack of inhibitions, talkativeness, risk taking, and irritability. Using the lens of mania, Gruber examined how increased positive emotionality shapes one’s emotional experience and perception of others during a conversation between couples about a distressing topic. Her research revealed that heightened positive emotionality leads individuals to have a more positive emotional experience and perception of other people, inducing a positively biased “rose-colored glasses” perception of the world…”
Full Article»
New scale measuring inspiration featured in Yale News!
Mental illness and creativity have long been linked, yet how inspiration drives creative thinking has remained a mystery. A new study by researchers at Yale and the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom explored how different types of inspiration relate to one form of mental illness, bipolar disorder…“This more self-focused form of inspiration can be highly motivating; yet if experienced too intensely may make it difficult to socially connect with and accomplish goals,” said Yale’s June Gruber, a co-author of the study. Gruber hopes researchers will use more nuanced measures of inspiration to continue to study links with creativity and psychological health.
Full Article»
BBC interviews June Gruber
BBC Radio interviews June Gruber for discussion on well-being in which former Head of the Civil Service Lord O’ Donnell proposes a radical reform of public policy-making, targeted at "wellbeing", or life satisfaction, not simply economic growth.
BBC Radio Interview »
Sunny Dutra wins Best Poster award at SAS
Graduate student Sunny Dutra wins best poster award for her work on “Elevated Striatal Reactivity to Monetary and Social Reward in Bipolar I Disorder” at inaugural conference for the Sockety for Affective Science (SAS) held in Bethesda, Maryland on April 24-25, 2014.
SAS Conference Website»
Yale Herald interviews June Gruber
Yale Herald sits down to interview June Gruber about work on positive emotions and mental health: “June Gruber is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology (PEP) Laboratory. Her research focuses on a paradox that confuse, or even scare most listeners: the negative effects of poistive emotion. Dr. Gruber is the author of myriad articles and chapters, and has edited a volume of research in her field, Dark and Light Sides of Positive Emotion. This week the Herald sat down with her to learn more about her lab here at Yale and the glum fallout of feeling happy.”
Yale Herald Article»
Work by PEP lab featured in Greater Good "Top 10 Insights of 2013"
Work on stability of positive emotions featured in the Top 10 Insights of 2014, by the Greater Good Science Center. They present " 10 scientific insights published in peer-reviewed journals from the past year that we anticipate will be cited in scientific studies, help shift public debate, and change individual behavior in the year to come.."
Full story »
APS Rising Star June Gruber shares predictions about future of field
In winding up this year-long series, the Observer contacted several APS Rising Stars from the past few years and asked them to provide forecasts on the different directions that psychological and integrative research will take over the next quarter century. Here’s what they hope to see by the time APS celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Read More»
Science News Features Work on Down-Side of Positive Emotion
Work by June Gruber and colleagues featured in Science News article on The Bright Side of Sadness. The article notes: "Thomas Jefferson defended the right to pursue happiness in the Declaration of Independence. But that’s so 237 years ago. Many modern societies champion everyone’s right to be happy pretty much all the time…"
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Human Emotion - Top 5 iTunes U Course
June Gruber's course on Human Emotion available for free download on iTunes U, and ranked in the top 5 across all iTunes U courses in October 2013. This course introduces students to a diverse array of theoretical and empirical issues related to the study of human emotion. Some questions the course will address include: What are our emotions? What purpose do they serve? How do emotions relate to our thoughts, memories, and behaviors towards others? What happens when our emotional responses go awry? Although these questions date back to early philosophical texts, only recently have experimental psychologists begun to explore this vast and exciting domain of study.
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Edge Foundation Talk on Positive Emotion
June Gruber speaks on the "Scientific Study of Positive Emotion" at a recent Edge Foundation event. Talk transcript reads: "What I'm really interested in is the science of human emotion. In particular, what's captivated my field and my interest the most is trying to understand positive emotions. Not only the ways in which perhaps we think they're beneficial for us or confer some sort of adaptive value, but actually the ways in which they may signal dysfunction and may not actually, in all circumstances and in all intensities, be good for us..." [Watch Full Video] [Media Coverage in Boing Boing]
Yale Daily News Features work on Theory of Mind in Bipolar Disorder
Recent work by graduate student Amanda Purcell and June Gruber on emotional theory of mind in healthy adults and those with bipolar disorder featured in the Yale Daily News on 11/12/13! Article begins: "New research from the Yale Psychology Department suggests individuals with bipolar disorder not currently suffering from its symptoms are able to perceive others’ emotions just as accurately as healthy people. To measure emotional perception, the research team used a theory of mind test, which gauges subjects’ abilities to sense others’ emotional states..."
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APS Observer Features Experts in Emotion Series
APS Observer notes: "Affective science is the study of emotion and ties together decision-making, attention, and self-regulation, as well as the underlying physiology and neuroscience of emotions. Get the latest on emotion research by watching the Experts in Emotion series of videos and following the newly formed Society for Affective Science."
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NARSAD Grant Awarded
June Gruber receives 2013 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. The NARSAD Young Investigator Grant provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research. Two year awards up to $60,000, or $30,000 per year are provided to enable promising investigators to either extend research fellowship training or begin careers as independent research faculty. Basic and/or clinical investigators are supported, but research must be relevant to serious brain and behavior disorders such as schizophrenia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, or child and adolescent mental illnesses."
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NPR Covers Expert in Emotion Series
NPR's blogger Tania Lombrozo of UC Berkeley covers June Gruber's expert in emotion series.
Full interview here »
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APS Observer Features Work by PEP Lab
Research on the caveats of positive emotion and happiness by June Gruber and colleagues featured on cover of APS Observer. They note that "What the positive psychology movement often fails to describe, however, are the boundaries of these benefits. It's great to feel good; it's less great to feel manic or to feel good when you're supposed to feel fear or anger or to make the pursuit of happiness your only goal in life. In a 2011 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a group of researchers led by June Gruber of Yale University surveyed what they call the "dark side" of happiness: a grey line of literature that exposed the times, ways, and degrees to which the emotion stops being useful and starts being harmful."
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30-Rock Visits PEP Lab
John Lutz from 30-Rock and SNL visits PEP as part of a upcoming book "The Lutz Experiment" with Dr. Jamil Zaki. This book will focus on making psychology more accessible to the public featuring John Lutz running through a battery of experiments with psychology researchers throughout the country, while learning a few personal lessons about his own inner mind and emotional fears.
CBS Features June Gruber on Happiness
Work on positive emotion disturbance by Dr. Gruber on CBS New York News segment "Happiness is Partially Genetic. "As CBS 2’s Kristine Johnson reported Tuesday, recent research indicates that they also play a part in how happy you are, and how happy you could be. These days, it seems that everywhere you turn, there are self-help books and Web sites on how to find happiness. After all, isn’t that everyone’s ultimate goal?
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Hillary Devlin wins APAGS/Psi Chi Junior Scientist Fellowship
Graduate student Hillary Devlin wins Junior Scientist Fellowship from 2012 APAGS/Psi Chi. The Junior Scientist Fellowship recognizes outstanding research-oriented students early in their graduate studies, and provides support toward getting their research off the ground. Congratulations, Hillary!
June Gruber featured in Greater Good "Top 10 Insights"
Work on negative consequences of positive emotion by June Gruber featured in the Top 10 Insights of 2012, by the Greater Good Science Center. They present "10 of the scientific insights that made the biggest impression on us in 2012—the findings most likely to resonate in scientific journals and the public consciousness in the years to come."
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Sunny Dutra wins 2013 Sigma-Xi Grant
Graduate student Sunny Dutra awarded Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research to support her dissertation work. The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) program has been providing undergraduate and graduate students with valuable educational experiences for more than 80 years. By encouraging close working relationships between students and faculty, the program promotes scientific excellence and achievement through hands-on learning. Congrats Sunny!
June Gruber wins Arthur Greer Memorial Prize
June Gruber has been named the 2012 recipient of the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize, one of Yale College's highest honors, in support of junior faculty in the natural or social sciences. Dr. Gruber was awarded this prize in support of her research on the potentially negative consequences of positive emotion.
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PEP lab featured in The Washington Post
PEP lab's work on how too much happiness can lead to unhappiness featured in The Washington Post. "The happier you are, the better, right? Not necessarily. Studies show that there is a darker side to feeling good and that the pursuit of happiness can sometimes make you . . . well, less happy. Too much cheerfulness can make you gullible, selfish, less successful — and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Happiness does have benefits (beyond feeling good, of course). It can protect us from stroke and from the common cold, makes us more resistant to pain and even prolongs our lives. Yet, June Gruber, a professor of psychology at Yale University who has studied happiness, warns that it’s important to experience positive moods in moderation." Also see Rush Limbaugh's provocative response!
Hillary Devlin awarded NSF Graduate Fellowship Honorable Mention
Grad student Hillary Devlin awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention for her work on positive emotion and empathy, studying how positive emotion may both facilitate and hinder our ability to understand the emotion's of others in her work with Drs. Jamil Zaki and June Gruber.
June Gruber awarded SRP Early Career Award
June Gruber has won the Early Career Award of the Society for Research on Psychopathology for her research on positive emotions and bipolar disorder.Dr. Gruber's research focuses on the ways in which positive emotion can go awry and towards developing an integrated model of positive emotion function and dysfunction using the theoretical lens and methodological tools of affective and clinical science science. These issues are examined both in clinical populations characterized by disturbed positive emotion (e.g., bipolar disorder and depression) as well as healthy populations to understand the normative function of emotion, and are assessed emotion using a multi-modal approach across experiential (e.g., self-report, narrative), behavioral (e.g., FACS), and biological (e.g., psychophysiology, neural, neuroendocrine, genetic) levels of analysis.
Elizabeth Reeves awarded NIMH-IRTA Award
Lab Manager Elizabeth Reeves awarded NIMH-IRTA fellowship to work with Dr. Ellen Leibenluft studying mood dysregulation and pediatric bipolar disorder! The goal of the Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Awards Program is to introduce recent college graduates to biomedical research, as well as provide additional time to pursue successful application to a doctoral degree program. Congrats, Lizz!
Sohini Bandy & Barbara Paradis win Mellon Undergraduate Research Awards
Paragraph: Undergraduate students Sohini Bandy & Barbara Paradis receive Mellon Undergraduate Research Grant towards their senior thesis projects in the PEP lab. Sohini's thesis focuses on studying eye-tracking methodologies to better understand emotional disturbance in bipolar disorder, and Barbara's thesis focuses on using a dot-probe paradigm to better understand attention-related processing biases in mania.
June Gruber speaks on happiness at TEDxCambdrige
Dr. Gruber speaks about the 'dark side' of happiness at TEDx Cambridge. See discussion at Forbes.com.
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June Gruber speaks at Berkeley Master's Tea
On January 11th, 2012 Psychology Prof. June Gruber gave a talk at a Master's Tea hosted by psychology Professor Marvin Chun who is also the Master of the Berkeley Residential College at Yale. In her talk, Prof. Gruber answered the question: "Is Happiness Always a Good Thing?"
June Gruber interviewed by Yale Daily News
June Gruber interviewed on her work and career on positive emotion and mental health for the Yale daily news "Office Hours with David Burt."
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