Richard Contrada

About

Richard Contrada received his PhD in Social/Personality Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1985 and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, before joining the Rutgers Psychology Department in 1986. Within the department, he is involved in the Health, Social, and Clinical programs. His research focuses on psychosocial and emotional factors involved in the development and course of chronic physical diseases, with a particular emphasis on coronary disease as a major killer and a model for understanding psychological factors and pathophysiological mechanisms relevant to physical health. He has examined the role of psychological stressors and anger-related personality attributes in provoking physiologic responses that contribute to the etiology and progression of coronary disease. Additionally, his interests include the role of emotions and emotional syndromes such as anxiety and depression in adaptation to health crises, including recovery from open-heart surgery. His work considers social-contextual and other factors that influence emotional responses to health threats and stressors, such as age, gender, social support, and religious involvement. Currently, he is also interested in the role of mental representations or beliefs in explaining patients’ failure to undertake health-promoting behaviors for managing chronic conditions like coronary disease. His recent work involves…

Research topics

• Psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychiatry
• Medicine
• Social psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Sociology
• Environmental health
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Poincaré plot indices as measures of sympathetic cardiac regulation: Responses to psychological stress and associations with pre-ejection period

  International Journal of Psychophysiology · 2018-08-11 · 44 citations

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• Psychosocial predictors of virus and social distancing fears in undergraduate students living in a US COVID-19 “hotspot”

  Cognitive Behaviour Therapy · 2021 · 30 citations

  = 608) residing in a U.S. pandemic "hotspot" at the time of data collection (between 7 April to 9 May, 2020). Outcome variables included viral contamination fears and social distancing fears. Predictor variables included biological sex, underlying medical vulnerability, number of recent viral symptoms, presence of positive COVID-19 test in social network, anxiety, depression, stress, emotion dysregulation, intolerance of uncertainty, body vigilance, and health anxiety. Female sex, anxiety severi…

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• Pathways from exposure to racial/ethnic discrimination to depression: Testing a social-cognitive model

  Social Science & Medicine · 2021 · 24 citations

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• Gender stereotypes and parental status: A comparison of fathers, mothers, and the childless-by-choice.

  Psychology of Men & Masculinity · 2020 · 20 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
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• Dispositional Optimism and Cardiovascular Reactivity Accompanying Anger and Sadness in Young Adults

  Annals of Behavioral Medicine · 2018-08-04 · 18 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: Dispositional optimism, a generalized expectation for positive outcomes, appears to promote physical health and well-being, including positive effects on cardiovascular disease outcomes. Mechanisms may involve adaptive responses to psychological stressors that dampen their physiological impact. PURPOSE: This study investigated (i) whether individual differences in optimism are associated with attenuated cardiovascular reactivity (CVR); (ii) whether the CVR moderating effect of optimi…

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Recent grants

• NIH Grant R03MH046900

  NIH · $133k · 1993

• NIH Grant R01AG016750

  NIH · $1.5M · 2007

• NIH Grant R03AG015160

  NIH · $78k · 2000

Frequent coauthors

• Ellen Idler

  63 shared

• Tyrone J. Krause

  Jersey City Medical Center

  62 shared

• Tanya Goyal

  54 shared

• David S. Krantz

  36 shared

• John B. Kostis

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  19 shared

• David C. Glass

  19 shared

• John S. Gottdiener

  16 shared

• Sari D. Holmes

  Johns Hopkins University

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Social/Personality Psychology

  Graduate Center of the City University of New York

  1985

• Other

  Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Similar researchers at Rutgers University

• Judith Hudsonh-49
• Maurice Eliash-48
• Jacob Feldmanh-36