The Department of Psychology and Neuroscience proudly presents Dr. June Gruber, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at CU Boulder

Title: Positive Emotion Disturbance and Psychological Health

Abstract: Emotions are powerful processes that enable us to respond adaptively to life’s triumphs and challenges. A longstanding assumption has been that positive emotions are predominantly adaptive relative to negative emotions. This talk will provide an overview of my laboratory’s research program that strives to shift these theoretical and empirical tides to illuminate the nature of, and mechanisms underlying, positive emotion disturbance and its risk for psychopathology onset and severity. This guiding framework will be used to review supportive evidence we’ve collected utilizing a multi-modal clinical-affective science approach outlining key themes in positive emotion difficulties in individuals at risk for, and diagnosed with, affective disorders. Core directions of our lab’s work will be discussed including multi-site studies examining changes in affective trajectories among a large sample of diverse young adults during a period of chronic socioemotional stress as well as ensuring the inclusivity and broader impact of our work through international partnerships examining cross-cultural variation in positive emotion difficulties. Implications will be discussed for considering the importance of positive emotion in elucidating mood health and its translational relevance.