Welcome to the Emotion and Mental Health Lab!

Directed by Dr. Renee J. Thompson at Washington University in St. Louis

The lab’s research centers on understanding people’s everyday emotional experiences. We use multi-method approaches, including ecological momentary assessment, to examine how people feel throughout their daily lives. The lab is interested in what impacts how people feel, how people regulate their emotions, their beliefs about their emotions, and how emotion is involved in decision making. We recruit a variety of samples, including adolescents and adults, and people with and without depression. 

*Recent Lab News*

  • “What your social media activities really say about you,” Alison Tuck was interviewed by HEC Science & Technology (08/24/2023). She discusses recent findings on social media use and the four different categories of social media use.
  • “People with depression actively fight to manage their emotion,” was featured in Wash U’s Ampersand (6/30/23). It features findings recently published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science from a collaboration between, Daphne Liu, Tabea Springstein, Alison Tuck, Tammy English and Renee Thompson.
  • “What your likes, posts really say about you,” featured in Wash U’s The Record (6/7/23), highlights findings from recently published social media research by Alison Tuck and Renee Thompson featured in Assessment.
  • Daphne Y. Liu, Ph.D., was the the recipient of the 2023 Society for Affective Science Diversity Trainee Award (March 2023)
  • Both Daphne Liu and Alison Tuck‘s poster abstracts were promoted to flash talks at the 2023 Society for Affective Science Conference.
  • Thompson, Springstein, and Boden‘s (2022) Gaining clarity about emotion differentiation paper (link) earned a Top Cited Paper Award for 2021-2022 from Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
  • Alison Tuck and Renee Thompson along with Dr. Pete Koval (Co-PI) were awarded funding for a project called Social Media Use and Healthy Adolescent Development: A Multi-Method Investigation by the Global Incubator Seed Grants Initiative sponsored by the  McDonnell International Scholars Academy  (November 2022)
  • Renee Thompson was awarded funding by the COVID Faculty Support Initiative sponsored by the Wash U Office of the Provost for the project Examining how interoception is involved in emotional and social processing (April 2022).
  • Renee Thompson and Alison Tuck along with Drs. Rebecca Wanzo, Reem Hilu, and Raven Maragh-Lloyd were awarded a WUSTL Seeding Projects for Enabling Excellence & Distinction” (SPEED) for their collaboration addressing questions related to social support systems across social media, the relationship vulnerable populations have to media, and how interdisciplinary collaboration can transform how scholars approach media. link
  • The lab’s NIA funding was announced in Wash U’s The Record. link
  • Beatris Garcia is our newest lab member, starting  as a first year graduate student in the clinical area. Welcome, Beatris!
  • Over the summer, Daphne Liu started her clinical psychology internship at Emory University, and alum, Tasha Bailen, started her postdoc at Boston University, working with Tim Brown, Ph.D. Congrats to both!
  • Emotion and Mental Health Lab graduate students, Daphne Liu and Alison Tuck, are presenting at the 2021 Society for Affective Science Conference in April! Daphne’s  submission “Age Differences in Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Seeking Behaviors in Everyday Life” was selected to be published after the conference in a supplement of Affective Science. 
  • Emotion Lab research highlighted in the New York Times!*  Read the article, which explores feeling bad about feeling good during COVID-19, here.