May Lab Spotlight: Laboratory of Personality, Relationships and Hormones

Each month, The Michigan Daily's research beat publishes a feature on one University of Michigan laboratory to highlight the efforts of the lab team and the importance of the research. The following article is the lab spotlight for the month of May 2023.

This edition of The Daily's lab spotlight features the Laboratory of Personality, Relationships and Hormones. Directed by psychology professor Robin Edelstein, the lab examines personality and relationships through a multidisciplinary approach involving cognitive processes and biological markers such as hormones.

The Lab

The Personality, Relationships and Hormones lab is meant to be a welcoming and open space for this important research to take place. Edelstein said she focuses on creating a collaborative and friendly environment within her lab.

"It's really important to me to have a lab that prioritizes collegiality and the people," Edelstein said. "I don't want a competitive sort of atmosphere at all."Edelstein said she believes the welcoming atmosphere within the lab also helps put research subjects at ease. In order to create an environment where research subjects can feel comfortable opening up about personal experiences and relationships, Edelstein said it helps to have research assistants who like working with people.

"I’ve had some great research assistants who are really into the more solitary, kind of quiet things," Edelstein said. "I think finding people who are interested in people and making sure people feel comfortable even though they’re talking about sometimes sensitive things (is important)."

While the lab does not have their own independent space to conduct experiments, Edelstein said her team uses testing rooms within a shared lab space.

The Research

The Personality, Relationships and Hormones Lab looks at a variety of factors affecting interpersonal relationships and emotions. Edelstein said much of her research investigates how people approach close relationships in different ways.

"I’m especially interested in how people differ in their approaches to close relationships and how those differences may affect the relationships," Edelstein said. "I’m looking at the physiological implications of those differences."

Within the lab, there is flexibility for lab members to explore the different areas of research they are interested in. For psychology Ph.D. student Nazanin Kafaee, her work with Edelstein is a continuation of interests she has had since high school. Kafaee said she has been fascinated by hormone and relationship research since her time as an undergraduate student.

"I was very involved in social psychology and sex and relationship research in undergrad, and I was looking to continue that kind of research," Kafaee said. "(Edelstein's) work seemed really relevant to my interests. She has done a lot of stuff with hormones and I was always interested in doing work with hormones."

Psychology Ph.D student Annika From, another assistant in the lab, said she is specifically interested in how members of couples are similar to each other and the impact of that similarity on the success of the relationship.

"My research specifically focuses on sort of similarity between couples and how people think about how similar they are to their partner, (and) whether that actually matters for their romantic relationship's success," From said.

Sabrina Beck, a psychology student at the University of Zurich, met Edelstein through a dual-degree program with the Max Planck Institute. Beck is conducting research with Edelstein during her brief stay at the University.

"I was interested in doing the research stay here because (Edelstein) … is quite specialized on couples in general," Beck said. "We’re focused on parents and children and my supervisor in Zurich is very specialized on children. So I really benefited from our research stay here, (and) having Robin as an expert on the couple level, the relationship level."

Kafaee said one study the lab is currently doing involves giving couples a doll to take care of and measuring hormone responses to the added stress.

"We have a bigger project that most of our labs are involved in — the infant simulators study — where couples are given a baby-like-doll and they were supposed to take care of it, and we’re measuring a lot of personality related measures and also physiological stuff like their testosterone and cortisol," Kafaee said.

According to Edelstein, this study aims both to assess how couples approach caregiving activities and to look at how couples respond to sleep deprivation within the context of parenthood.

"How are couples, especially couples who don't maybe have kids, negotiating this caregiving task?" Edelstein said. "(The research tried to examine) what happens when you’re sleep-deprived, essentially because that is what happens when you have a new baby, and how might that affect people's relationships."

The Impact

The lab's team believes their research has far-reaching impacts, in part because of its interdisciplinary nature, and in part because it is directly applicable to many people's lives. From said she believes research into personality, relationships and hormones is meaningful because it relates to something that is important in many people's lives and can be a major predictor of overall happiness.

"A statistic we always talk about is that supportive romantic relationships are one of the best predictors of overall well-being and even mortality and physical health," From said. "Just intuitively, I think it's often something a lot of people care about because a lot of us are in romantic relationships at some point in our lives."

From said she often notices the applicability of her research in her own life, which in turn influences her research.

"A lot of times the questions that come up in your personal life, you bring into the research and you’re interested about sort of exploring what the science has to say about those things," From said. "So I think there's definitely a lot of overlap between the personal and the spirit of scientific work, especially in a research area like this."

Summer News Editors Shao Hsuan Wu and Abigail VanderMolen can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

Please consider donating to The Michigan Daily