Lab News

February 22, 2020

A first-authored paper by graduate student Thao Nguyen is now in press at Personal Relationships. This paper is part of the journal’s Special Issue on Relationship Science and the Credibility Revolution, in which we submitted a pre-registered analysis plan, received an in principle acceptance of the manuscript based on the expected theoretical contributions, then collected the data and completed the analyses and the manuscript. The paper examines the role of stress mindset in partner’s provision of support to each other.

January 10, 2020

Dr. Williamson has been named one of two Consulting Editors of the Year for the Journal of Family Psychology.

November 21, 2019

Graduate student Megan Schouweiler presented her research on “Does the Quantity of Time Couples Share Differ by Household Income?” at NCFR in Fort Worth.

October 31, 2019

Dr. Williamson has published a new paper, along with collaborators at the University of Georgia and UCLA, that examines the relationship processes and outcomes of couples who get married after having a child, in comparison to couples who started marriage without a child. Results show that among couples who entered marriage with a shared biological child (premarital parents), satisfaction levels were lower and communication was less effective, less positive, and more negative than couples entering marriage without children. Rates of change in marital functioning did not differ between groups, but the rate of marital dissolution was twice as high among premarital parents (19.1%) relative to couples who were not parents at the start of marriage (9.5%).

October 29, 2019

Dr. Williamson and graduate student Thao Nguyen, in collaboration with Dr. Brian Doss and his graduate student Karen Rothman at the University of Miami, have published a new paper in Family Process which compares couples seeking an online couple therapy program to examine whether low-income couples have similar presenting problems to higher-income couples. 

October 3, 2019

Dr. Williamson was quoted in an article on forge.medium.com about research on couples communication.

September 26, 2019

Dr. Williamson will be admitting a new graduate student to enter the UT Austin HDFS PhD program in Fall 2020. The deadline to apply is Dec 1. See the Join Our Team page for more information. 

September 5, 2019

The lab has received a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to investigate how the experienced of living in poverty affects pro-relationship behaviors.

August 29, 2019

The lab has published a new paper in SPPS, Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Diverse Newlywed Couples, with collaborator Justin Lavner at UGA.

See coverage of this paper on Forbes.com.