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June Gruber is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University, and Director of the Yale Positive Emotion and Psychopathology (YPEP) Laboratory. Dr. Gruber received her B.A. from UC Berkeley in Psychology with Highest Distinction in Scholarship. She subsequently earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology also at UC Berkeley, and was a NIMH Predoctoral Fellow in Affective Science. Dr. Gruber is also a licensed Clinical Psychologist (Connecticut Lic #003118).
The experience of happiness, and of positive emotions, is a basic building block of human nature. Positive emotions motivate us to pursue important goals, savor experiences, counteract the cardiovascular effects of stress, and maintain vital social bonds. However, a relatively untouched question remains -- Can feeling good sometimes be bad? Specifically, her work focuses on elucidating the question of whether positive emotion might -- in particular degrees, contexts, or types -- be a predictor of negative psychological-health outcomes.
Broadly, work conducted in Dr. Gruber's lab aims to provide an integrated model delineating the nature of positive emotion disturbance using the theoretical lens and methodological tools of affective science. This work focuses on both clinical populations characterized by disturbed positive emotion (e.g., bipolar disorder) as well as healthy populations to understand the normative function of emotion. As such, our lab bridges clinical science, social-personality, and neuroscience traditions using a multi-method approach assessing emotional functioning at experiential (e.g., self-report, narrative), behavioral (e.g., FACS), and biological (e.g., psychophysiology; and more recently neural and genetic) levels of analysis.
The long-term aim of this research agenda is to facilitate identification of the upper boundary conditions of positive emotion, areas of impairment as well as resilience, and potentially hasten the development of future interventions focused on savoring and building positive emotions at the right time, and in the appropriate degree.
Dr. Gruber's research has recently been featured in the the BBC, the Boston Globe, the Telegraph, CBS, MSNBC, USA Today, Science Daily, Men's Health, and Psychology Today. She was also recently named a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science (APS). For more information, please visit the Yale Positive Emotion and Psychopathology lab website.