Research OverviewAt the broadest level, my research focuses on understanding contextual influences on children and adolescents’ social and emotional development. Specifically, I am interested in examining effective parenting and developing parenting programs, and understanding children and adolescents’ emotion regulation and related behaviors. I am also interested in how early adverse and protective experiences affect development, and I encourage you to visit my ACEs and PACEs website (acesandpaces.com), which includes a blog and quizzes on how early experiences affect later development.
For interviews about my research, click here and see below. |
About Dr. Morris
I am the George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair and Regents Professor in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University. My passion for research and outreach is focused on promoting optimal child and adolescent development. Currently, I am the Editor for the Journal of Research on Adolescence; I am endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Research Mentor, Level IV; and I am a certified Trainer of Trainers for Active Parenting programs. I have authored numerous articles and chapters on child and adolescent development, and I am co-editor of the book: Authoritative Parenting: Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development, published by the American Psychological Association Press.
I earned a PhD in developmental psychology from Temple University under the supervision of Dr. Larry Steinberg, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Arizona State University under the direction of Dr. Nancy Eisenberg. In the fall of 2001, I began a tenure-track position in the Applied Developmental Psychology Department at the University of New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, my family and I relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma where I was hired at OSU. My passion for children and families fits well with the land grant mission of OSU. I have been involved with several applied centers at OSU, and was a founding member of the Center for Family Resilience and the Institute for Building Early Relationships (IBEaR). My research focuses on parenting and emotion regulation, with an emphasis on social and emotional development during childhood and adolescence. I love working with students and am always looking for eager undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning more about research, who want to be part of a research team. Click here for information on how to get involved in our lab. In addition to my research, I enjoy teaching graduate and undergraduate classes in child development, parenting, and research methods. I also regularly provide parenting workshops in the community. I am constantly learning from my students and my own children (my lab at home), and I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to study children and families every day. |
