Roxane Cohen Silver

UCI School of Social Ecology

Roxane Cohen Silver

Professor of Psychological Science, Medicine, and Public Health;
Associate Director, ADVANCE Program, Office of Inclusive Excellence
Ph.D. Northwestern University
(949) 824-2192
rsilver@uci.edu
4336 Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway / 515 Aldrich Hall

Department:
Psychological Science

Specializations:
coping with traumatic life events (personal losses and collective traumas), stress, social psychology, health psychology

Curriculum Vitae

Representative Publications

Brief Biographical Sketch

Google Scholar Profile

Silver Stress & Coping Lab (lab website)

 

At some point, most people encounter stressful events that can have a major impact on the course and direction of their lives. They or those they love may be confronted with a disabling accident, serious illness, death, or violent crime. In my work, I attempt to investigate systematically the acute and long-term reactions to these personal traumas, as well as the impact of larger community disasters such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes or firestorms, school shootings, and war. I seek to identify individual, social and societal factors that facilitate successful adjustment to stressful life events and to identify myths concerning the coping process. I also explore the long-term physical, cognitive, emotional, and social effects of traumatic experiences and consider the impact of beliefs and expectations of one’s social network on the adjustment process. Finally, my research highlights predictors of individual and community resilience, the cumulative effects of collective traumas, and the role of traditional and social media in transmitting the stress of community disasters beyond the directly impacted community.

I was principal investigator of a multi-year longitudinal study of the national impact of the September 11th terrorist attacks on mental and physical health. I recently oversaw several other research projects, in collaboration with current and former students and national and international colleagues: a study on resilience and vulnerability following repeated natural disasters in Java, Indonesia (in collaboration with Psychology Beyond Borders, an international nonprofit organization that I co-founded and for which I serve as Chair of the Board of Directors), a study of a nationally representative sample of over 2000 adults following the massive 8.8 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in February, 2010 in Chile (with colleagues at the Universidad Andrés Bello in Santiago), an interdisciplinary project that examined the political impact of the psychological response to the threat of terrorism and responses to turbulence in our society (e.g., the economic meltdown), and a multidisciplinary project to develop a quantitative index of the psychosocial impacts of natural and human-caused disasters (including health, social functioning, and political attitudes) through the use of vital statistics, archival and administrative information, and other secondary sources of data. My current work includes a national longitudinal study of the April, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the Ebola public health crisis, the 2016 Orlando nightclub mass shooting, and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Michael. Our research team has just begun an NSF-funded national longitudinal study of the 2020 novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States.

Webinar: Using the psychological science of crisis leadership and communications to navigate the Coronavirus: A webinar for public officials (American Psychological Association, March 20, 2020)

Video of Thompson, Jones, Holman, & Silver (Science Advances, 2019)

Audio of Roxane Cohen Silver on 9/11: Together We Feel (Public Radio International’s living on earth; Air Date: September 9, 2011)

Video of Roxane Cohen Silver on Coping with Traumatic Life Experiences

Academic Distinctions