Matthias Mehl
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin, May 2004
Diplom (~ M.A.), Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany, July 1998
- Understanding how social interactions matter for personality, coping, and health
- Identifying psychological information that is contained in and conveyed through natural word use
- Developing behavioral research methods for studying daily life
I am a social, personality, and health psychologist who is interested in the psychological implications of our daily lives. I study individual differences in social life and the role that our social lives play for coping with upheavals and health. Methodologically, I adopt an ecological “out-of-the-lab-and-into-the-real-world” approach and develop behavioral assessment methods for studying everyday life. My work focuses on the naturalistic observation of social interactions and quantitative text analysis of natural language use.
Mehl, M. R. (2017). The Electronically Activated Recorder or EAR: A method for the naturalistic observation of daily social behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 184-190. DOI: 10.1177/09637214166806
Mehl, M. R., Raison, C. L., Pace, T. W. W., Arevalo, J. M. G., & Cole, S. W. (2017). Natural language indicators of differential gene regulation in the human immune system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 12554-12559. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1707373114
Mehl, M. R. & Conner, T. S. (Eds.) (2012). Handbook of research methods for studying daily life. Guilford Press: New York, NY.
Mehl, M. R., Robbins, M. L., & Deters, g. F. (2012). Naturalistic observation of health-relevant social processes: The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) methodology in psychosomatics. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74, 410-417.
Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Holleran, S. E., & Clark, C. S. (2010). Eavesdropping on happiness: Well-being is related to having less small talk and more substantive conversations. Psychological Science, 21, 539–541.
Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Ramírez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men? Science, 317, 82.
Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students’ daily social environments and natural conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 857–870. 547–577.
PSYC 352 – Personality
PSYC 396H -- Honors Proseminar
PSYC 596 -- Advanced Social/Personality Psychology