Education
NIAAA Postdoctoral Fellow/Senior Fellow Trainee
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
University of Washington School of Medicine
Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors
Seattle, WA
Ph.D., Psychology
Department of Psychology
College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
Florida International University, Miami FL
Concentration: Applied Developmental Science
Masters in Science, Psychology
Department of Psychology
College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
Florida International University, Miami FL
Concentration: Counseling Psychology/Applied Developmental
Bachelors of Arts, Psychology
Minor: Religious Studies
Department of Psychology
College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
Florida International University, Miami FL
Q&A
Tell us about your discipline. How did you get interested in it?
After changing my major three times – from English to Biology to History – I found a major that had pieces of what I liked about all my previous majors: Psychology. With every psychology class I continued to take, my interest grew, and I became even more curious about human behavior and the different developmental pathways people take. I quickly realized I needed to get a PhD to answer fully the questions I had and continue conducting the research I started during my undergraduate studies. I pursued my doctoral degree in Applied Developmental Science and, although I often get comments about working with children, this field focuses on all areas of the lifespan. Although kids are fantastic, I was more passionate about adolescence and young adulthood.
I became interested in this studying risk behavior almost by chance. I thought I had wanted to study a completely different topic in psychology. After completing an undergraduate thesis, I realized the most interesting aspect of my thesis was the relation between social anxiety and alcohol use. I wanted to understand why people chose to use alcohol and what those decisions could lead to later. I became more interested in the decision-making processes related to risk behavior as I continued in my studies and learned more about what science did (and did not know) about risk behavior. We know that most risk behavior does not occur in isolation, and for teens and young adults, particularly, peers and context influence risk behavior. We also know that aspects of the self, such as identity, ethnicity, and gender, have been found to modify or intensify risk behavior as well. However, some unanswered questions continue to drive my research. Why are some people more likely to engage in risk behavior in specific contexts and not others? Why are some people unlikely to engage in health-risk behavior at all, despite being in the same situation as those engaging in risk behaviors? What about the situation, the individual, or the interaction between individual factors and situational factors lead to different outcomes? How does the influence of the individual in a group impact prevention and intervention?
My research seeks to answer these questions and use this information to develop effective prevention and intervention programs using knowledge garnered from etiological studies. With this information, my goal is to inform prevention and intervention efforts, possibly making them more nuanced and ultimately more efficacious and effective. Without considering how the person and aspects of the situation lead to and away from risk behavior, prevention and intervention efforts will not be as successful in real-world application.
What are a few of your professional accomplishments from the last couple of years?
In the past couple of years, aligned with my research goals, I have published articles and presented research at scientific conferences that have focused on risk behavior’s etiology and examining preventative-interventions focused on risk behavior. For example, my colleagues and I examined whether a brief, evidenced-based alcohol use preventative-intervention was beneficial for Latinx adolescents in the preventative-intervention as a whole and by immigrant generation (i.e., first-, second-, and third-generation), drinking experience, and gender over time. Overall, we found that drinking cognitions varied by 1) how much experience Latinx participants had in drinking; 2) by gender; and 3) by immigrant generation. Our results cautiously suggested that the voluntary preventative-intervention might be a promising intervention for Latinx youth of different immigrant generations. Additionally, this work highlights that future work needs to continue to examine how preventative-interventions serve the needs of Latinx youth, taking into consideration drinking history, gender, and immigrant generation.
Related to etiology, my colleagues and I published an article examining how alcohol-specific parental communication affected both strategies that people may use to reduce negative consequences associated with drinking as well as alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences among 18 and 20-year-olds in the United States. Our findings indicated that parental communication was related to strategies to decrease alcohol-related consequences but not to actual alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences.
In addition to my research, I am proud of the work I have been doing as part of the Diversity Committee for the Research Society on Alcoholism. In the past year, I joined the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) sub-committee tasked with developing and implementing the DEI climate survey for administration to the Society’s members and participants in the national conference.
What projects are you currently working on?
At Murray State, two other colleagues and I in the Psychology Department are currently collecting data in efforts to 1) to gain information about sexual behavior and substance use among MSU college students; and 2) to collect information on cognitions and behaviors that can inform future preventative-interventions for Murray State students.
In addition to my work at Murray State, in ongoing collaborations, I continue to work on developing a web-based preventative intervention with text boosters with my colleagues at the University of Washington (i.e., Social Norms & Skills Training: Motivating Campus Change). This past year on the project, I have developed a measure for assessing barriers and access to mental health and substance use services.
What courses do you teach at Murray State? What do you hope students take from your classes?
I teach undergraduate and graduate courses including Introduction to Psychology, Statistics, Drugs, Alcohol, and Behavior, and the Psychology of Human Sexuality.
Across all of my courses, I hope students take away an appreciation of the multitude of pathways and trajectories that individuals may take, an appreciation for the variability of life and others’ experiences, and an increased ability to interrogate sources of information and to question what is generally accepted.
Why is psychology an important area of study?
Human behavior is the study of ourselves; therefore, I think it is pretty essential to understand how humans think, feel, and behave. More specifically, regarding risk behavior, understanding the possible pathways in and out of risk behavior and what serves as protective factors can help society overall. For example, excessive alcohol use is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States and, in 2010 cost the nation 249 billion dollars (CDC, 2021). Improving the understanding of under what conditions individuals engage in risk behavior (like excessive alcohol use) can help inform efforts to reduce these alarming statistics.
Thank you, Dr. McCue!
College of humanities and fine arts 