Director
Clayton Neighbors, Ph.D.

Dr. Neighbors' work focuses on social and motivational influences in etiology, prevention, and treatment of health and risk behaviors. Outcomes of interest include alcohol and substance abuse, problem gambling, and intimate partner violence. Support for this research has been provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Mental Health, the Department of Defense, and the National Center for Responsible Gaming.

Research Interests:

• Alcohol and substance use Social norms and their application to prevention and brief intervention
• Self-determination and susceptibility to social influences
• Models of intimate partner violence and aggressive driving and applications to intervention 
• Spiritual and religious influences on behavior and mental health 
• Event specific prevention
• Social comparison and social identity Implicit and explicit alcohol identity
• Expressive writing interventions 
• ​Social Influence within Social Networks

ResearchGate:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Clayton_Neighbors 
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ca/citationsuser=Blhrmp8AAAAJ&hl=en ​

​Affiliated Assistant Professor
Chelsie M. Young, Ph.D.

Background:
           B.A., Psychology, Eastern Illinois University, 2010
           M.A., Experimental Psychology, College of William and Mary, 2013
           Ph.D., Social Psychology, University of Houston, 2016
 
Academic Positions:
           Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer, University of Houston,
​                  2016-2018
           Assistant Professor, Rowan University, 2018-Present

Research Interests:

• Developing empirically-supported strategies incorporating personalized normative feedback, motivational interviewing, and expressive writing to facilitate behavior change
• Examining mechanisms of action for behavior change such as the self-conscious emotions of guilt and shame, cognitive processing, and perceptions and norms to gain insight into how such behavior change strategies work and which components are most effective
• Exploring individual difference factors such as shyness, culture, drinking motives, and defensiveness as moderators of behavior change to better understand for whom such strategies are best suited

 ​
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chelsie_Young
Website: ChelsieMYoung.com

​Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Mary M. Tomkins, Ph.D.

Background:
          B.S. Psychology, Abilene Christian University
          M.S. Psychology, Abilene Christian University
          Ph.D. Social Psychology, University of Houston
 
Research Interests:
Mary Tomkins is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Social Influences and Health Behaviors lab. Her main research interest is social connectedness, specifically its association with well-being and prosocial behaviors and how it can be enhanced. She is also interested in interventions that can be developed to encourage virtue-based behavior and factors associated with moral behavior. In her spare time, she works on projects focused on religiousness, specifically how it is related to alcohol use and how it can be incorporated into brief alcohol interventions, the effects and buffers of ostracism, belongingness interventions, and the ways in which religion can be healthy or unhealthy.​
​
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Tomkins