Hello and welcome to my webpage.  I am a professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island., where I have been a faculty member since 1998.  I advise graduate students in our Clinical and Behavioral Science Ph.D. programs and those interested in graduate study can find out more about graduate study and our department here  (http://www.uri.edu/artsci/psy/). 

My background and current research interests are listed below, with additional information available at my Psychology Department webpage or by contacting me.

Prior to joining the faculty at URI, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies (http://www.caas.brown.edu/) where I maintain an appointment as a visiting professor in community health.

I did my graduate work in Social Psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia (http://psychology.missouri.edu/home.php), under the very able mentorship of Professor Kenneth Sher (http://web.missouri.edu/~sherk/) and my undergraduate coursework at Arizona State University (http://psych.la.asu.edu/). 

My main research interests include: alcohol-related preventive interventions in college student populations; the etiology of alcohol use and misuse; and longitudinal data analyses. 

Research Interests

Preventive Interventions

My research in this area takes a harm reduction perspective – attempting to reduce alcohol related problems during a developmental period of enhanced risk (e.g., emerging adulthood).  Recent projects include both individual (e.g., Wood et al., 2007; 2010) and environmental-level (Wood et al., 2010) approaches as described further under Current Projects.

Etiology

My research on the etiology of alcohol use and misuse largely focuses on relations between psychological (e.g., alcohol expectancies, drinking motives, personality), social (e.g., peer influences, perceived norms), and familial (e.g., family history of alcoholism, parental involvement) factors and alcohol use and misuse among college students and young adults.  Recently, these interests have  extended to include investigations of relations between candidate genes, psychosocial factors, and alcohol use and misuse. I am currently also working on a study examining how levels of alcohol consumption affect driving performance. Previous laboratory studies on the acute effects of alcohol consumption on aggressive behavior and stress response

Longitudinal Data Analyses

I am interested in the application of advanced data analytic techniques with longitudinal data, especially during emerging adulthood.