David M. Almeida
Professor of Human Development
Contact Information
114 Henderson Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park PA 16802
814-865-2656
(fax) 814-863-9423
dalmeida@psu.edu
Research Interests
I am a life-span developmental psychologist with a primary focus on stress and
coping during middle adulthood. My research interests center on the general
question of how daily experiences within the family and other social contexts, such
as work and leisure, influence individual health and well-being. In contrast to
research on major life events such as marital disruption and job loss, I am
interested in the health effects of everyday stressors and fulfillments such as work
deadlines and family interactions. One theme of this enterprise examines the ways
that daily experiences affect individuals. I believe that minor daily stressors exert
their influence not only through separate direct effects on emotional and physical
functioning but also by accumulating over time and across different contexts to
create persistent irritations and frustrations that result in more serious stress
reactions such as anxiety and depression. A second general theme of my research
addresses how sociodemographic and individual factors influence exposure to
daily experiences. Central to this idea is that daily stressors do not occur randomly
and that the emotional and physical concomitants of experiencing stressors are not
simply a matter of chance or bad luck. Sociodemographic factors such as income
and social networks play a part in creating the types of daily environments and thus
the experiences that individuals are likely to face. Individual factors, such as
genetic endowment, personality, role commitments, and personal goals, direct
people in their selection of and efficacy in daily activities. The third theme
considers individual differences in emotional and physical reactivity to daily
experiences. For example, some people become very distressed when they are
faced with increased work responsibilities and demands, whereas others do not. In
my research, I am beginning to explore how structural and individual factors in
concert relate to this differential reactivity.
My current research efforts are directed toward the National Study of Daily
Experiences (NSDE). I am the Principal Investigator of this project and have
received grants and contracts from the National Institute of Mental Health, the
National Institute on Aging, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to carry out the
data collection and analysis of this project. The NSDE is one of the in-depth
studies that are part of the MacArthur Foundation National Survey of Midlife in the
United States (MIDUS). The purpose of the NSDE is to examine the day-to-day
lives, in particular the daily stressful experiences, of a subsample of 1484 MIDUS
respondents who completed short telephone interviews on each of eight
consecutive nights. Thus, the data set is comprised of 10,389 daily interviews.
Although previous daily diary research has advanced our understanding of daily
stress processes, there are important limitations to these prior studies that are
being addressed in the NSDE. First, previous studies in this area relied on small
and often unrepresentative samples that limit the generalizability of findings. For
this reason, the NSDE uses a large national sample of adults in the United States.
Second, previous studies of individual differences in exposure and reactivity to
daily stressors have typically examined only one source of variability, such as
neuroticism, to the exclusion of others. The NSDE corrects this problem by utilizing
the data collected in the larger MacArthur baseline survey on a wide array of
personality variables in combination with the sociodemographic characteristics of
respondents to study the determinants of exposure and reactivity to daily stressors.
Third, previous studies typically have relied on self-administered checklists of daily
stressors that only assess the occurrence of stressors. The NSDE uses a semi-
structured telephone interview instrument that measures quantitative (e.g.,
frequency) and qualitative (e.g., type, severity) aspects of daily stressors. Fourth,
previous studies have failed to investigate the role of genetics in both exposure
and reactivity to daily stressors. The NSDE has a subsample of 242 identical and
fraternal same-sex twin pairs to explore how genes and environment interact to
determine how individuals adapt to day-to-day stressful experiences.
The NSDE recently was funded by National Institute on Aging to collect an
additional wave of data that includes biomarkers of health. This grant is part of a
Program Project Grant on Integrative Pathways to Health during Adulthood
comprised of myself and four other project leaders: Carol Ryff, Burton Singer,
Margie Lachman, and Richard Davidson. Working with this interdisciplinary team of
researchers, we will investigate how cumulative exposure and reactivity to daily
stressors predict changes in global health reports (e.g., chronic conditions,
functional impairment) and correlate with biomarkers of health. Specific indicators
include both an overall allostatic load measure, discrete measures of immune
markers, and daily cortisol assessments. In addition, the allostatic load measures
include a series of laboratory challenge studies that assess recovery functions in
biomarkers from cognitive challenges. Thus, for example, we can examine whether
those who have a greater proportion of interpersonal stressors will have a higher
allostatic load compared to those with a lower proportion of interpersonal stressors.
We also will examine how daily stressors, as measured in NSDE correlate with
measures of emotional circuitry and brain via prefrontal activation asymmetry and
emotion-modulated startle during and following the offset of positive and negative
emotional challenges. We predict that those who have greater exposure and, more
importantly, greater reactivity to daily stressors will have slower recovery following
negative challenges. Furthermore, the combination of the MIDUS survey data,
daily stress processes, and biological indicators allows us to examine individual
differences in the influence of daily stressors on allostatic load and brain
functioning.
I am beginning to explore the theme of daily stress and health in other projects. My
HDFS colleague, Nan Crouter, and I are assessing daily experiences and health in
a sample of Hotel Workers, Managers and their spouses. This project recently was
chosen by NICHD to be part of a research Network on Work-Family policy and
Health. I am also a Co-Investigator of the recent follow-up to the Normative Aging
Study (NAS) with Dan Mroczek, Purdue University, and Ron Spiro, Veterans
Administration. The NAS is a longitudinal study of armed forces veterans from the
Boston Veterans Administration started in 1961 to study the psychosocial
predictors of health. In our current project, we are assessing trajectories of health
and personality over a 30-year time frame. In addition we have added a daily diary
protocol to link more macro trajectories of health to intraindividual variation in daily
well-being. I am also a Co-Investigator of a National Institute of Diabetes and
Digestive and Kidney Diseases project to study the effects of daily stress and
depressed mood on daily management of Type II diabetes with Lawrence Fisher,
University of California, San Francisco. In this project, individuals with diabetes will
complete daily telephone interviews every day over 21 days to help determine how
stressor and mood predict glucose functioning directly and indirectly via daily
health behaviors.
Education
B.A., 1987, Psychology, California State University, Northridge
M.A., 1990, Psychology, University of Victoria
Ph.D., 1993, Psychology, University of Victoria
Honors / Awards
1999: Teaching Award of Merit, National Association of Colleges of Agriculture,
College of Agriculture, University of Arizona.
1996: Outstanding Alumni Award, California State University, Northridge
1994: MacArthur Foundation Research Network Affiliate
Current Research Projects
Work, Family, & Health Network. National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, National Institute on Aging, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Research of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (Co-Principal
Investigator).
Changes in Daily Stress During Adulthood National Institute on Aging. National
Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 2003-2008, (Principal Investigator).
Personality, Health and Well-being Trajectories in Adulthood. National Institute on
Aging with dual sponsorship by the National Institute of Mental Health. National
Institutes of Health, 2005-2010, (Co-Investigator).
Daily Stress and Well Being among African Americans. Center for Population
Health and Aging, (Principal Investigator).
Adults and Adolescents with Autism: A Study of Family Caregiving. National
Institute on Aging, (Co-Investigator).
Work, Stress, Health and Parenting among Hotel Employees. National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, 2005-2008 (Co-Principal Investigator).
Daily Depressive Affect & Disease Management in Diabetes. National Institute on
Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, 2003-
2007, (Investigator).
Hotel Work and Well-Being: The Penn State Hotel Managers Initiative. Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, 2005-2008, (Co-Investigator).
Professional Experience
2007-present: Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, The
Pennsylvania State University.
2004 - 2007: Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, The
Pennsylvania State University.
2003 - Visiting Scholar, Institute on Education, University of London, United
Kingdom
2002-2003: Visiting Scholar, Institute on Aging, University of Wisconsin, Madison
2000 - 2003: Associate Professor, Division of Family Studies and Human
Development, School of Family and Consumer Resources, University of Arizona.
1996 - 2000: Assistant Professor, Division of Family Studies and Human
Development, School of Family and Consumer Resources, University of Arizona.
1993-1996: Postdoctoral Fellow, NIMH Miltisite Family Research Consortium,
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
Selected Publications
Almeida, D. M., Davis, K. D., & Crouter, A. C.(in press) Translational research on
work and family: Daily stress processes in hotel employees and their families.
In Improving the state of Americans: Translational research in the social and
behavioral sciences. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Almeida, D. M., Piazza, J. R. Stawski, R. S. , & Kline, L. C. (in press) The
Speedometer of Life: Stress, Health and Aging. In K.W. Schaie & R. Levey. The
Handbook of the psychology of aging. Elsevier, NewYork
Piazza, J. R, Almeida, D. M., Dimitreva, N. & Klein, L. C. (2010). Frontiers in the
use of biomarkers in research on stress and aging. Journal of Gerontology:
Psychological Sciences. 65, 513-25
Almeida, D. M., & Wong, J. D. (2009). Life transitions and daily stress rocesses. In
G. H., Elder, Jr., & J. Z. Giele (Eds.), The craft of life course research (pp. 41-162).
New York: Guilford Press.
Almeida, D. M., Piazza, J. R., & Stawski, R. S. (2009). Inter-individual differences
and intra-individual variability in the cortisol awakening response: An examination
of age and gender. Psychology and Aging, 24, 819-827.
Almeida, D. M. McGonagle, K., & King, H. (2009). Assessing daily stress
processes in social surveys by combining stressor exposure and salivary
cortisol. Biodemography and Social Biology, 55, 220-238.
Sliwinski, M. J., Almeida, D. M., Smyth, J., & Stawski, R. S. (2009). Intraindividual
change and variability in daily stress processes: Findings from two measurement-
burst diary studies. Psychology and Aging, 24, 828-840.
Charles, S. T., & Almeida, D. M. (2007). Genetic and environmental effects on daily
life stressors: More evidence for greater variation in later life. Psychology and
Aging, 22(2), 331-340.
Almeida, D.M., Neupert , S.D. , Banks, S.R., & Serido, J. (2005). Do daily stress
processes account for socioeconomic health disparities? Journals of Gerontology:
Social Sciences .
Almeida, D.M. (2005). Resilience and vulnerability to daily stressors assessed via
diary methods. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14 , 64-68.
Center Affiliations
Center for Healthy Aging
Strategic Themes
Human Development
Contexts and Social Institutions