Brenda Lee McDaniel, Ph.D.

Research Interests

My research program integrates personality, social, developmental, and health psychology and emphasizes adolescent and young adult populations. One line of research involves exploring the relationship of personality factors (e.g., shy, optimistic, and brave) to health outcomes (e.g., depression, blood pressure, and cortisol stress levels). My second line of research involves examining environmental influences (e.g., family dynamics, role models) upon moral-emotional development (e.g., prosocial behavior, emotional regulation). A third line of research involves examining conflict (e.g., socioemotional- facial coding, physiological readings) and health within young-adult intimate couples.

 

Student Involvement

I welcome student collaboration. Motivated undergraduates can get experience in research design, data collection, analyses, presentations, and publications. I interview interested undergraduates each semester. Please contact me if you are interested (bmcdani@ksu.edu or 785-532-0807).

Are you a soon-to-be graduate student looking for a mentor? I currently have 1-2 openings for doctoral students in my Personality and Health Research Lab for the 2010-2011 academic year. All application materials are due January 15th, 2010.  Complete application information may be found at http://www.k-state.edu/psych/graduate/graduate_application_procedures. htm      

Graduate students can expect to learn all phases of the research process and conduct research independently. Please contact me if you are interested in joining our research team (bmcdani@ksu.edu or 785-532-0807).

 

Representative Publications

• McDaniel, B. L., Grice, J. W., & Eason, E. A. (2010). Seeking a multi-construct model of morality, Journal of Moral Education, 39 (1). 

• Eisenberg, N., Morris, A. S., McDaniel, B. L. & Spinrad, T. (2009). Moral cognitions and prosocial responding in adolescence. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 3rd ed. pp. 229-265.  
• McDaniel, B. L., & Grice, J. W. (2008). Predicting psychological well-being from self-discrepancies: A comparison of idiographic and nomothetic measures. Self and Identity, 7(3), 243-261.

• Grice, J. W., Jackson, B. J., & McDaniel, B. L. (2006). Bridging the idiographic-nomothetic divide: A follow-up study. Journal of Personality, 74(4), 1191-1218. 

• McDaniel, B. L., & Grice, J. W. (2005). Measuring self-discrepancies on the Big Five personality traits with the repertory grid. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 2, 18-31.