Elizabeth Cauffman

About

Elizabeth Cauffman is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society, the School of Education, and the School of Law. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Temple University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University. Dr. Cauffman has published over 180 articles, chapters, and book chapters focusing on adolescence, including topics such as adolescent brain development, risk-taking and decision-making, parent-adolescent relationships, and juvenile justice. Her research findings have been influential in legal contexts, contributing to the American Psychological Association's amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in landmark cases such as Roper v. Simmons, which abolished the juvenile death penalty, and Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama, which limited the use of life without parole sentences for juveniles. In addition to her research, Dr. Cauffman has actively worked to bridge research and policy. She served as a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and its Applications. Currently, she directs the Center for Psychology & Law and the Masters in Legal &…

Research topics

• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Medical emergency
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Adolescent decision making: A decade in review

  Journal of Research on Adolescence · 2021 · 106 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Research in the past decade has highlighted the nuances of adolescent decision making. In this review article, we summarize several themes evident in the field of developmental science including the redefinition of adolescence and the ways in which adolescent decision-making capabilities converge with or diverge from those of adults. While the decision-making process is similar for adolescents and adults in contexts that encourage deliberation and reflection, adolescents and adults differ in con…

  DOI

• Adolescent Contact, Lasting Impact? Lessons Learned From Two Longitudinal Studies Spanning 20 Years of Developmental Science Research With Justice-System-Involved Youths

  Gothic.net · 2023-12-01 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this article, we summarize key findings from 20 years of research conducted at the intersection of developmental psychology and juvenile justice in the United States. We predominantly examine data from two large-scale, multisite longitudinal studies involving justice-system-involved adolescents-the Pathways to Desistance study and the Crossroads study. Topics of discussion include predictors of offending and desistance from crime; youth outcomes and psychosocial needs; and emerging research,…

  PublisherDOI

• Trajectories of offending over 9 years after youths' first arrest: What predicts who desists and who continues to offend?

  Journal of Research on Adolescence · 2024-03-30 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Antisocial and illegal behavior generally declines as youth approach adulthood, but there is significant individual variation in the timing of the peak and decline of offending from adolescence to young adulthood. There are two primary research questions in the present study. First, are there subgroups of youth who follow similar patterns of offending over the nine years after their first arrest? Second, what baseline factors predict which youth will follow each pattern of offending? Data were d…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Life after life: Recidivism among individuals formerly sentenced to mandatory juvenile life without parole

  Journal of Research on Adolescence · 2024-06-06 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In Miller v. Alabama (2012), the Supreme Court abolished mandatory juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences and subsequently decided that the ruling applied retroactively (Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2016), effectively rendering thousands of inmates eligible for resentencing and potential release from prison. In its decisions, the Court cited developmental science, noting that youth, by virtue of their transient immaturity, are less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation relative to the…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effects of neighborhood disadvantage and peer deviance on adolescent antisocial behavior: Testing potential interactions with age-of-onset

  Development and Psychopathology · 2023-12-11 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Research has suggested that childhood-onset conduct problems (CPs) are more strongly related to individual predispositions, whereas adolescent-onset CP is more strongly associated with social factors, such as peer delinquency. Neighborhood disadvantage (ND) increases the risk for associating with deviant peers. Thus, peer delinquency could mediate the relationship between ND and adolescent-onset CP. This mediational hypothesis has not been tested previously. We tested this hypothesis in 1,127 ju…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K01MH001791

  NIH · $718k · 2007

Frequent coauthors

• Laurence Steinberg

  171 shared

• Paul J. Frick

  131 shared

• Alex R. Piquero

  University of Miami

  66 shared

• Thomas Grisso

  University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

  57 shared

• Gail A. Wasserman

  Columbia University

  50 shared

• Susan J. Ko

  National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

  50 shared

• Adrian Angold

  Duke University

  49 shared

• Joseph J. Cocozza

  49 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Developmental Psychology

  Temple University

Awards & honors

• American Psychological Association’s amicus briefs in Roper…

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