David M. Almeida, Ph.D.

image of David Almeida

Ph.D., University of Victoria, 1993

Professor of Human Development

Contact Information

114-H Henderson
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802

(814) 865-2656

dalmeida@psu.edu

Research

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.

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).

Education

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.

Honors and 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

Publications

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.

Seltzer, M. M., Almeida, D. M., Greenberg, J., Savla, J., Stawski, R. S. Hong, J., Taylor, J. L. (2009). Psychological and biological markers of daily lives of midlife parents of children with disabilities. Journal of Health and Social Psychology, 50, 1-15.

Skaff, M. M., Mullan, J. T., Almeida, D. M., Hoffman, L., Masharani, U., Mohr, D., et al. (2009). Daily negative mood affects fasting glucose in type 2 diabetes. Health Psychology, 3, 265-272.

Almeida, D. M., Charles, S. T., & Neupert, S. D. (2008). Assessing Health Behaviors Across Individuals, Situations, and Time. In K. W. Schaie & R. P Abeles (Eds.), Social Structures and Aging individuals: Continuing Challenges. New York: Springer.

Almeida, D. M., & Wethington, E. (2008). Daily Telephone diary assessments: Lessons learned from the National Study of Daily Experiences. In R. F. Belli, F. P. Stafford, & D. F. Alwin (Eds.), Calendar and Time Diary Methods in Life Course Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Aronson, K. R., Almeida, D. M., Stawski, R. S., Kline, L. C., & Kozlowski, L. T. (2008) Smoking is associated with worse mood on stressful days: Results from a national diary study. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 36, 259-269.

Asbury, K., Almeida, D. M., Hibel, J., Harlaar, N., & Plomin, R. (2008). Clones in the classroom: A daily diary study of the nonshared environmental relationship between monozygotic twin differences in school experience and achievement. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 11, 586-595.

Davis, K. D., Goodman, W. B., Pirretti, A. E., & Almeida, D. M. (2008). Nonstandard work schedules, perceived family well-being, and daily stressors. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 70, 991-1003.

Edwards, R. R., Almeida, D. M., Klick, B., Haythorthwaite, J., & Smith, T. M. (2008). Duration of sleep contributes to next-day pain report in the general population. Pain, 137, 202-207.

Grzywacz, J. G., Butler, A. B., & Almeida, D. M., (2008). Work, family and health: Work-family balance as a protective factor against stresses of daily life. In A. Marcus-Newhall, D. F. Halpern, & S. J. Tan (Eds.), Changing Realities of Work and Family. (pp. 194-216). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Neupert, S.D., Stawski, R.S., & Almeida, D.M. (2008). Considerations for sampling time in aging research. In S. M. Hofer, & D. F. Alwin (Eds.), The Handbook of Cognitive Aging: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (pp. 492-505). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Savla, J., Almeida, D. M., Davey, A., & Zarit, S. (2008). Routine assistance to parents: Effects on daily mood and other stressors. Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 63, S154-S161.

Stawski, R.S., Sliwinski, M.J., Almeida, D.M., & Smyth, J.M. (2008). Reported exposure and emotional reactivity to daily stressors: The roles of adult age and global perceived stress.  Psychology and Aging, 23(1) 52-61.

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.

Neupert, S. D., Almeida, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (2007). Age differences in reactivity to daily stressors: The role of personal control. Journal of Gerontology, 62B(4), 216-225.

Piazza, J. R., Charles, S. T., & Almeida, D. M. (2007). Living with chronic health conditions: Age differences in affective well-being. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 62B(6), 313-321.

Almeida, D. M. & Neiss, M. (2006). Age differences in daily weekly and monthly reports of affective distress: Social influences on adult personality, self-regulation, and health. In L. Carstensen & K. W. Schaie (Eds.), Social Structure, Aging and Self-Regulation. New York: Springer.

Almeida, D. M., Serido, J., & McDonald, D. (2006). Daily life stressors of early and late baby boomers. In S. K. Whitbourne & S. L. Willis (Eds.), The Baby Boomers Grow Up: Contemporary Perspectives on Midlife (pp. 165-183). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Charles, S. T., & Almeida, D. M. (2006). Daily reports of symptoms and negative affect: Not all symptoms are the same. Psychology and Health, 21(1), 1-17.

Mroczek, D. K., Almeida, D. M., Spiro III, A., & Pafford, C. (2006). Modeling intraindividual stability and change in personality. In D. K. Mroczek & T. D. Little (Eds.), Handbook of Personality Development (pp. 163-180). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Neupert, S.D., Almeida, D.M., Mroczek, D.K., & Spiro, A. III. (2006). Daily stressors and memory failures in a naturalistic setting: Findings from the VA Normative Aging Study. Psychology and Aging, 21(2), 424-429.

Neupert, S.D., Almeida, D.M., Mroczek, D.K., & Spiro, A. III. (2006). The effects of the Columbia shuttle disaster on the daily lives of older adults: Findings from the VA Normative Aging Study. Aging & Mental Health, 10(3), 272-281.

Ridley, C. A., Cate, R. M., Collins, D. M., Reesing. A. L., Lucero, A. A., Gilson, M. S., & Almeida, D. M. (2006).  The ebb and flow of marital lust:  A relational approach. The Journal of Sex Research, 43(2), 144-153.

Yorgason, J. B., Almeida, D. M., Neupert, S. D., Spiro, A., & Hoffman, L. (2006). A dyadic examination of daily health symptoms and emotional well-being in late-life couples. Family Relations, 55, 613-624.

Almeida, D.M. (2005). Resilience and vulnerability to daily stressors assessed via diary methods. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14 , 64-68.

Almeida, D. M. & McDonald, D. (2005). The time Americans spend working for pay, caring for families, and contributing to communities. In J. Heymann (Ed.) Unfinished Work: Balancing equality and democracy in an era of working families (pp. 180-203) . New York : The New Press.

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 .

Birditt, K., S., Fingerman, K., L., & Almeida, D. M (2005). Age differences in exposure and reactions to interpersonal tensions: A daily diary study. Psychology and Aging .

Charles, S, & Almeida, D. M., (2005). The Relation between Health and Negative Affect: Not all symptoms are created equal. Psychology and Health .

Mallars, M. C., Almeida, D. M., & Neupert, S. D. (2005). Women's daily physical health symptoms and stressful experiences across adulthood. Psychology and Health , 20 , 389-403.

Almeida, D. M., (2004) Using daily diaries to assess temporal friction between work and family. In A. C. Crouter & A. Booth (Eds.), Work-family challenges for low income parents and their children . Hillsdale , NJ , Lawrence Earlbaum Associates (127-136).

Almeida, D. M., & Horn, M. C. (2004). Is daily life more stressful during middle adulthood? In O.G. Brim, C. D. Ryff & R. C. Kessler (Eds.), How healthy are we? A national study of well-being at midlife (pp 425-451). Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.

McDonald, D.A., & Almeida, D.M. (2004). The interweave of fathers daily work experiences and fathering behaviors. Fathering, 2 , 235-251.

Grzywacz, J. G., Almeida, D. M., Neupert, S. D., Ettner, S. L. (2004). Socioeconomic status and health: A microlevel analysis of exposure and vulnerability to daily stressors. Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 45 , 1-16.

Mroczek, D. K, & Almeida, D. M. (2004). The effect of daily stress, personality, and age on daily negative affect. Journal of Personality , 72 (2), 355-378.

Mroczek, D. K, Spiro, III, A., & Almeida, D. M. (2004). Between- and within-person variation in affect and personality over days and years: How basic and applied approaches can inform one another. Aging International , 28 , 260-278.

Neiss, M. & Almeida. D. (2004). Age differences in the heritability of mean and intraindividual variation of psychological distress. Gerontology, 50, 22-27.

Serido, J., Almeida, D. M. & Wethington, E. (2004). Chronic stressors and daily hassles: Unique and interactive relationships with psychological distress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 45 , 17-33.

Almeida, D. M., McGonagle, K. A., Cate, R., Kessler, R. C., & Wethington, E. (2003). Psychosocial modifiers of the relationship between marital arguments and daily mood. Marriage and Family Review.

Galambos, N. L., Barker, E. T., & Almeida, D. M. (2003). Parents do matter: Trajectories of change in externalizing and internalizing problems  in early adolescence. Child Development, 74(2), 578-594.

Martin M., Frey, C., Oswald, F.,  & Almeida D., M., (2003). Alter als Prädiktor für Alltagsanforderungen im höheren Alter (Age as a predictor of everyday environmental demands in old age). Zeitschrift für Gerontologie und Geriatrie, 36, 42-49.

Almeida, D. M., Wethington, E., & Kessler, R. C. (2002). The Daily Inventory of Stressful Experiences (DISE): An Interview-Based Approach for Measuring Daily Stressors. Assessment, 9, 41-55.

Grzywacz, J. G., Almeida, D. M., McDonald, D. (2002). Work-family spillover and daily reports of work and family stress in the adult labor-force. Family Relations, 51, 28-36.

Almeida, D. M., McDonald, D. Havens, J., & Schervish, P. (2001). Temporal patterns in social responsibility. In A. Rossi (Ed.), Caring and doing for others: Social responsibility in the domains of family, work, and community (pp. 135-156). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Almeida, D. M., Wethington, E., & McDonald, D. (2001).  Daily variation in paternal engagement and negative mood:  Implications for emotionally supportive and conflictual interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family,63(2), 417-429.

McDonald, D., & Almeida, D. M. (2001). Fathers’ interactions with their adolescents. In R.M. Lerner & J. V., Lerner (Eds.) Today’s Teenagers: Adolescents from A to Z. Santa Barbara CA: ABC-Clio

Wethington, E., Almeida, D. M., Brown, G. W., Frank, E., & Kessler, R. C. (2001). The assessment of stress exposure. In A. Vingerhoets (Ed.), Assessment in Behavioral Medicine (pp. 113-134). New York: Taylor & Francis.

Kessler, R. C., Almeida. D. M., Bergland, P., & Stang, P. (2001). The effects of time-space variation in pollen and mold exposure to impariment in daily work performance among workers with allergic rhinitis in the United States. Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, 87, 287-295.

Almeida, D. M., Wethington, E. & Chandler, A. (1999).  Daily transmission of tensions between marital dyads and parent-child dyads.  Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61(1), 49-61.

Larson, R., & Almeida, D. M. (1999). Emotional transmission in the daily lives of families: A new paradigm for studying family processes. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 5-20.

Rowe, D.C., Almeida, D. M., & Jacobson, K. (1999). School context and genetic influences on aggression in adolescence. Psychological Science, 10, 277-280.

Almeida, D. M., & Kessler, R. C. (1998). Everyday stressors and gender differences in daily distress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 670-680.

Almeida, D. M., & McDonald, D. (1998). Weekly rhythms between parents’ work stress, home stress, and parent-adolescent tension. In R. Larson & A. C. Crouter (Eds.), Temporal rhythms in adolescence: Clocks, calendars, and the coordination of daily life. New Directions in Child Development, 82, 53-68.

Galambos, N. L., Sears, H. A., Almeida, D. M., & Kolaric, G. C. (1995). Parents' work overload and problem behavior in young adolescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 5, 201-223.

Maggs, J. L., Almeida, D. M., & Galambos, N. L. (1995). Risky business: The paradoxical meaning of problem behavior for young adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 15, 344-362.

Almeida,D. M., & Galambos, N. L. (1994). Continuity and change in father-adolescent relations. In S. Shulmen & W. A. Collins (Eds.), Father adolescent relationships. New Directions in Child Development, 62, 19-40.

Almeida, D. M., Maggs, J. L., & Galambos, N. L. (1993). Wives' employment hours and spousal participation in family work. Journal of Family Psychology, 7, 233-244.

Galambos, N. L., & Almeida, D. M. (1993). The two-earner family as a context for adolescent development. In R. K. Silbereisen & E. Todt (Eds.), Adolescence in context: The interplay of family, school, peers, and work in adjustment (pp. 222-243). Berlin: Springer.

Galambos, N. L., & Almeida, D. M. (1992). Does parent-adolescent conflict increase in early adolescence? Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54, 737-748.

Almeida, D. M., & Galambos, N. L. (1991). Examining father involvement and the quality of father-adolescent relations. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1, 155-172.

Galambos, N. L., Almeida, D. M., & Petersen, A. C. (1990). Masculinity, femininity, and sex role attitudes in early adolescence: Exploring gender intensification. Child Development, 61, 1905-1914. Reprinted in S. Chess & M. E. Hertzig (Eds.), Annual progress in child psychiatry and child development. New York: Brunner Mazel.