Lifespan Development Lab (Infurna)

Under the guidance of Dr. Frank J. Infurna, the Lifespan Development Lab’s mission is to utilize a lifespan developmental psychology approach to examine psychosocial and health development across the adult lifespan. More specific research interests and projects focus on examining resilience to major life stressors and psychosocial predictors of healthy aging in adulthood and old age. Adversities and life transitions occur across adulthood and old age and the goals of our research is to investigate their role in shaping the course of well-being, health, and character strengths and identify factors that determine why some individuals adapt better than others following adversity. Furthermore, we focus on examining whether and how psychosocial factors such as perceived control, volunteering and job characteristics are associated with healthy aging outcomes of cognitive functioning, disability, disease, and mortality. To address our research questions, we apply contemporary methods of longitudinal and event occurrence analysis to longitudinal panel surveys, intensive assessment research designs and interventions. Below is a list of current research projects.

Research Projects:

Pathways to Character: The notion that adversities, challenges, or failures that occur during the course of one’s life have the potential to facilitate positive change or personal growth has had significant currency. However, a central limitation of the research examining the possibility for growth and resilience has been whether individuals’ reporting of growth translates into meaningful character change. This project features a prospective longitudinal design of repeated assessments from individuals in midlife over a period of two years to examine the nature of growth and resilience following adversity. Participants were assessed monthly for a period of two years on a wide range of measures, including character strengths, health, well-being, and life events.

The illumination of whether, how, and for whom adversity leads to character growth are the central objectives of this empirical project. The question of whether adversity leads to character growth focuses on the domains in which growth is most likely to manifest, and whether it differs by adversity; how refers to the processes through which character growth manifests following adversity (e.g., meaning-making); who focuses on individual characteristics that may increase or decrease the likelihood of experiencing growth following adversity (e.g., social support).

There are several reasons why we focus our study on individuals who are in midlife. First, midlife is a period in the lifespan that is characterized by a complex interplay of multiple roles (Infurna, Gerstorf, & Lachman, 2020; Lachman, 2004). Individuals are balancing family and career in the context of changing abilities in physical health and cognitive functioning. Second, the current generation of Baby Boomers is going to be living longer than previous generations. The changing needs of Baby Boomers in midlife may especially put strain on their character strengths and virtues due to the multiple roles that they will be involved in. For example, people in midlife are sandwiched between raising their children and “launching” them into adulthood, in addition to the changing relations with their aging parents due to greater involvement and potential caregiving-related duties.

Social Intelligence Training: In 2018, the research team completed a randomized controlled trial that focused on the effectiveness of a social intelligence training program on improving social relationship quality and mental and physical health in middle-aged adults. The social intelligence training program is an interactive intervention that is delivered online to participants. The main purpose of this study was to examine the helpfulness of educational materials provided through a set of brief, daily audio-visual programs that are designed to further social understanding. The study aims to help us understand how social learning programs may benefit adults seeking to improve the quality of their living, a helpful new way to promote peoples’ health, well-being and social relatedness. The following paper that was published last year outlines some of the main findings from this research project: Castro et al. (2019).