Organizational Stress and Resiliency. Employees and organizations face numerous demands as they attempt to excel. Our research program examines demands associated with high stress jobs (e.g. foreign language analysts, military personnel), as well as factors that sustain health and performance under difficult operational conditions. We are also involved in projects investigating how positive psychological states and stressors combine to predict health and performance among employees. Thomas W. Britt

Psychophysiology, Occupational Health Psychology. My research program is designed to examine the effects of stress and fatigue on normal human functioning at the physiological, behavioral and cognitive levels. Basic laboratory studies assess autonomic and neuroendocrine control of blood pressure, affect regulation and pain sensitivity in persons at enhanced risk for hypertension, coronary heart disease, and pain disorders. Applied studies assess the effects of occupational stress and fatigue on professional and executive performance. The overarching goal of applied studies is to design stress prevention and mitigation strategies to optimize human health and performance in difficult work environments. James McCubbin

Human Stress and Motion Science. Broadly defined, my research interests cover the mind-body interaction during stress. Specifically I am interested in the effects of stress in high workload environments (e.g. combat) and the role of stress in gastrointestinal (GI) disease. I use non-invasive psychophysiological techniques to study the responses of the GI and autonomic nervous systems to stress. I use a paradigm of physiological and psychological stress tasks, e.g., motion sickness; building clearing during military operations in urban terrain; to study physiological reactivity in healthy individuals in the laboratory and real-world. The goal of using this paradigm is to reveal the role that stress has on physiological reactivity. Eric Muth

Stress and Fatigue. One portion of my research program examines the effects of stress and fatigue on performance, physiological measures of stress and health, and subjective measures of effort, motivation, mood, stress, fatigue, health, and well-being. This research typically involves sustained operations research where participants are asked to complete a variety of tasks and physiological and subjective measures over a period that can range from several hours of work to an extended 20 hour work shift. The goal of this research is to document the effects of stress and fatigue by modeling work place settings and work-related tasks in order to develop potential mitigation strategies that can be employed in a variety of work settings. June J. Pilcher

The Positive Psychology of Courage. Courage is needed in many difficult situations, including saving others in physical peril, standing up for what is right, and stepping outside one's comfort zone to try something new. Although courage has been praised throughout history, it turns out we know remarkably little about the psychology of this important virtue. My research examines courage as a multi-faceted construct, and I am currently working on developing and testing a model of courageous action. In other words, in a given situation, what will help someone behave more courageously? What factors determine (after the fact) if we label an action as courageous? These questions have application in a variety of applied settings, including schools, the work place, therapy and coaching settings, and society at large. Cindy Pury