Center for Healthy Minds | 625 W. Washington Ave., Madison, WI 53703-2637
Christy Wilson-Mendenhall
Research Assistant Professor, Center for Healthy Minds
Research I conducted early in my career pointed to the plasticity of emotions – that our emotional experiences are more malleable than traditionally assumed. How, then, do we actively shape our emotional experiences to become healthier and more resilient? My research program conceptualizes and measures emotional skillsets to test hypotheses regarding whether these skills cultivate well-being. I engage in interdisciplinary integration, drawing on perspectives from situated cognition, constructionist approaches to emotion, and contemplative philosophies, to investigate well-being as an active process of life-long learning, practice, and transformation
Related Studies
Developing a Program to Learn and Measure Well-Being at Scale
In collaboration with Healthy Minds Innovations, this project strives to learn how to teach and measure well-being to scale
Mapping the Interface between Meditation and Neuroscience
Center researchers and collaborators are building new approaches to understand the links between traditional contemplative perspectives and scientific theory to better study the scientific effects of meditation training on the brain, body, mind and behavior.
Center researchers are developing a program to teach scientifically-informed practices and principles that facilitate well-being.
Moral Psychology and Flourishing
What drives moral behavior and greater well-being?
Smiling Faces Task and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Following up with past research participants about the pandemic's impact on their lives and their current psychological outlook.
The Student Flourishing Initiative
Center for Healthy Minds researchers, along with partners at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Virginia, are creating and studying the impact of a well-being curriculum for college freshman.