Giselle Ferguson

Research interests

My work broadly examines individuals' emotions and personalities, and how those both shape and manifest in individuals' experiences of stress and well-being. However, all these components continue to change across the lifespan, due to differing social roles and networks, cognitive capacities, and physical ability, so I make sure to study adults of different ages, with a special focus on older adulthood. I especially enjoy exploring these topics using measurement in daily life, to observe processes as they unfold in response to naturally-occurring events and circumstances. The methodology for collecting these measurements is also one of my central concerns; for example, how the measurement methods used in daily life may not always be the most ecologically valid for such a naturalistic context, or may benefit from being adjusted to be more accessible and valid for the contexts or populations we study. Recently, I have started to examine the specific words individuals use to describe their emotions, and how well those words map onto the terms we psychologists often use to assess emotion on questionnaires.