Beck Lab

Who We Are

The Beck Lab is an NIH- and NSF-funded research group at the University of California, Davis, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Emorie D. Beck, Associate Professor of Psychology.

In our work, we address three primary broad research questions relating to personality, emotion, health, cognitive function, and development, which you can learn more about on our publications page.

1. What makes a person who they are? We investigate how psychological structures and processes emerge from the ongoing interactions of persons and contexts, which cannot be understood independently of one another. We examine how these systems give rise to both stability and change in how people think, feel, and behave.

2. How do we measure and understand people in context? We develop and evaluate methods for capturing the complex, dynamic organization of psychological functioning within individuals and across contexts. We examine how different approaches to measurement and modeling shape our understanding of people, their similarities and differences, and their development over time.

3. What do psychological dynamics predict, both short- and long-term? We investigate how person-in-context processes unfold across timescales, from momentary fluctuations to long-term development, and how understanding these dynamics can improve explanations and predictions of meaningful outcomes.

Participate in our ongoing research studies!

We are not currently recruiting but will resume recruitment in September 2026.