Faculty

Related Links
Clinical Psychology Program

Research Interests
The guiding principle that organizes my research program is to gain an understanding of the link between the regulation of emotion and health outcomes related to chronic pain and cardiovascular illness. Within this overall framework, I am pursing several interrelated lines of research. One line investigates the relationship between emotion and adjustment processes in chronic pain, and a second examines the role of sleep disruption in the deregulation of emotion that characterizes some chronic pain states. A third line focuses on how emotion affects risk factors for the development of cardiovascular illness. The overarching goal of this research program is to develop a model of adjustment that takes into account individual differences in sleep duration and quality, emotion regulatory competence, as well as cognitive and social moderators of the stress response as they pertain to chronic pain states and cardiovascular illness.

I am currently seeking graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in making intellectual contributions to the following research projects. Project TEARS: The Emotion Amplification and Reduction Scales (Measure development). Project FAST: Fibromyalgia And Sleep Treatment (Intervention Study). Project STARS: Sleep Trouble And Reactivity to Stress (A laboratory based study of stress-reactivity).

Selected Publications
Hamilton, N. A., Zautra, A. J., & Reich, J. W. (in press). Affect and Pain in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Do Individual Differences in Affective Regulation and Affective Intensity Predict Emotional Recovery from Pain? Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Hamilton, N. A., & Kitzman, H. (in press). Effects of emotional control on goal self-regulation in chronically ill patients. Cognitive Therapy and Research.

Ingram, R. E., & Hamilton, N. A. (1999). Evaluating precision in the social psychological assessment of depression: Methodological considerations, issues, and recommendations. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 18,160-180.

Zautra, A. J., Hamilton, N. A., Potter, P., & Smith, B. S. (1999). Field research on the relationships between stress and disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis: Key measurement and design components. New York Academy of Sciences, 876, 397- 412.