Emma Adam

Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
PhD, Child Psychology, University of Minnesota, 1998
ek-adam@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae

A developmental psychologist, Emma Adam has been with Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy since 2000. She is interested in how everyday life factors such as work, school, and family relationships influence levels of stress, health, and well-being in parents and their children. She is trying to trace the pathways by which stress “gets under the skin” to contribute to poor health and affect children’s behavioral, academic, and emotional development. By using non-invasive methods such as measurement of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, she is studying how children and parents react to stress, as well as exploring how adolescents’ daily experiences, stress hormone regulation, and sleep habits influence their risk for the development of depression and anxiety disorders as they become adults.

In addition to her Northwestern University affiliations, she is a faculty affiliate of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work at the University of Chicago and a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for the Study of Human Development, the Society of Research on Adolescence, and the International Society for the Study of Psychoneuroendocrinology.

In addition to being an investigator on several NIH-funded research projects, Adam is the recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003-04) and received a five-year W. T. Grant Scholars Award to promote the careers of promising junior faculty.

Current Research

Family Stress Study. In the Family Stress Study, part of the Sloan Family Study, Adam explores factors that increase or decrease stress hormone levels in children and parents as they go about their everyday lives. She uses a noninvasive method—measuring the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol in saliva—and daily journal entries to gauge the psychological and physiological states of the mothers, fathers, and children throughout the day. She found that cortisol levels were lower, indicating lower stress levels, when parents felt productive, engaged, and challenged. This frequently occurred at work. Both parents and adolescents had higher stress hormone levels when they felt negative emotions such as worry and anger; adolescents also had higher stress hormone levels at moments they were alone rather than with other people. Kindergarten-aged children had higher stress hormone levels when they lived in a home that had high levels of conflict between parents and low levels of maternal involvement and warmth.

Daily Experiences, Stress and Sleep over the Transition to Adulthood. In this four-year longitudinal study, Adam explores the implications of differences in stress exposure for the development of depression and anxiety in adolescents as they leave high school and move into college and work experiences. Life events interviews, questionnaires and diaries capture changes in adolescents’ experiences over this transition. Cortisol stress-hormone measurement, as well as objective measurement of sleep quality (wrist-watch sized “actigraphs”) trace the impact of these changes on adolescents’ physiology. Yearly clinical interviews will assess symptoms and diagnoses of depression, anxiety, and other emotional disorder. Adam will examine whether differences in stress-exposure, stress hormone levels, and sleep quality help us to understand which adolescents remain emotionally healthy and which develop depression and anxiety disorders as they negotiate the transition to adulthood.

Selected Publications

Adam, E. K., E. K. Snell, and P. Pendry. 2007. Sleep timing and quantity in ecological and family context: A nationally representative time-diary study. Special issue on Sleep and Family Processes. Journal of Family Psychology 21(1): 4-19.

Adam, E. K., L. C. Hawkley, B. M. Kudielka, and J. T. Cacioppo. 2006. Day-to-day dynamics of experience-cortisol associations in a population-based sample of older adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:17058-63.

Adam, E. K. 2006. Transactions among trait and state emotion and adolescent diurnal and momentary cortisol activity in naturalistic settings. Psychoneuroendocrinology 31(5): 664-679.

Adam, E. K. 2004. Beyond quality: Parental and residential stability and childrenís adjustment.  Current Directions in Psychological Science 13(5): 210-13.

Adam, E. K., M. R. Gunnar, and A. Tanaka. 2004. Adult Attachment, parent emotion, and observed parenting behavior: Mediator and moderator models. Child Development 75:110-22.