Peer Relations and Adjustment Lab

Cynthia Erdley, Ph.D.

Broadly speaking, my research focuses on the ways in which children’s and adolescents’ peer
relationship experiences are associated with their adjustment. I have examined how various
social-cognitive processes (e.g., attributions, social goals, strategy knowledge, self-efficacy
perceptions) relate to youth’s behavior, peer status, and psychosocial adjustment.

My lab has been involved in numerous studies investigating these issues. Our research has
examined how peer acceptance and friendship (quality and quantity) predict to loneliness,
depression, and social anxiety, and whether these associations vary by gender and
developmental level. We have also investigated the role of different interpersonal processes
(e.g., co-rumination, negative feedback seeking, excessive reassurance seeking) in predicting
depression, non-suicidal self-injury, and suicidality in adolescents. In addition, we are exploring
the relations among emotional processes (e.g., intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion
regulation), friendship quality, and depression. In other work, using a measure of social
networks systematically developed in our lab, we are examining how the size and diversity of
college students’ social networks predict to their socioemotional adjustment.