Darby Saxbe
Biographic Data
| ID | 769499 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Darby Saxbe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Darby |
| FAMILY NAME | Saxbe |
| SIGNATURE | SAXBE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8951-4216 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 69 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Intrinsic resting-state connectivity and personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood
New fatherhood is marked by profound psychological and neural transformations. While these changes can be stressful, many fathers also report increased life satisfaction associated with parenthood. Personal meaning-the subjective sense that life has purpose, meaning, and coherence-may reflect positive adaptation to parenthood. This study investigated how personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood is associated with both psychological an…
Prenatal Expectations and Postpartum Reality: How Gender Egalitarianism in Infant Care Division Shapes Parenting Stress and Relationship Functioning
Prior research has found that mothers report greater relationship satisfaction when couples divide infant care more equally, but less is known about how parents arrive at their division of infant care. The present study examines the expectations for infant care that first-time coparents formulate together during pregnancy, how these expectations compare to their reported division of infant care at six months postpartum, how these expectations dif…
Behavioral and neural evidence for difficulty recognizing masked emotional faces
Facial emotion recognition is vital for human social behavior. During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks were widely adopted for viral mitigation and remain crucial public health tools. However, questions persist about their impact on emotion recognition and neural processing, especially in children, parents, and young adults. We developed the Masked Affective and Social Cognition task, featuring masked and unmasked faces displaying fear, sadness,…
Differences in infant negative affectivity during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This longitudinal study compared infant temperament rated at 3 months postpartum by 263 United‐States‐based women who gave birth during the COVID‐19 pandemic and 72 who gave birth prior to the pandemic. All women completed questionnaires assessing perinatal mental health, social contact, and infant temperament. Mothers whose infants were born during the pandemic reported higher levels of infant negative affectivity as compared with mothers whose …
The Future of Women in Psychological Science
There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field’s investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women’s career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issu…
Interpersonal Processes and the Development of Emotion Dysregulation
Emotion regulation and dysregulation often unfold within interpersonal contexts. Parent–child relationships provide early scaffolding of emotion regulation processes. Parents attune to, and influence, their children’s emotions, through pathways such as physical touch, infant cry, facial expressions, and stress physiology. Interpersonal emotion regulation and dysregulation processes continue to evolve within other close relationship contexts such …
Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies
Significance What predicts how happy people are with their romantic relationships? Relationship science—an interdisciplinary field spanning psychology, sociology, economics, family studies, and communication—has identified hundreds of variables that purportedly shape romantic relationship quality. The current project used machine learning to directly quantify and compare the predictive power of many such variables among 11,196 romantic couples. P…
Associations between language style matching and relationship commitment and satisfaction: An integrative data analysis
Language style matching (LSM) refers to similarity in function word use between two people during a conversation. Previous research has shown that LSM predicts romantic relationship stability, but it remains unknown why LSM is associated with stability. Across five studies from five different labs, we aimed to identify links between LSM and two relationship perceptions strongly associated with stability: commitment and satisfaction. Based on prio…
The buddy system: A randomized controlled experiment of the benefits and costs of dieting in pairs
A total of 67 pairs of female roommates were randomized into a diet condition: (1) both ate normally; (2) one dieted, the other ate normally; and (3) both dieted. Adherence, weight loss, anxiety, depression, disordered eating symptoms, and stress were measured. Dieters lost more weight than non-dieters, but average loss was <1 pound. Pairs where both dieted reported higher anxiety, depression, and disordered eating than one-dieter pairs. Structur…
Longitudinal Associations Between Family Aggression, Externalizing Behavior, and the Structure and Function of the Amygdala
Using longitudinal data from 21 adolescents, we assessed family aggression (via mother, father, and youth report) in early adolescence, externalizing behavior in mid-adolescence, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in late adolescence. Amygdalae were manually traced, and used as seed regions for resting state analyses. Both family aggression and subsequent externalizing behavior predicted larger right amygdala volumes and stronger amygdala-…
The transition to parenthood as a critical window for adult health
Becoming a parent is a transformative experience, marked by hormonal changes and neuroplasticity as well as shifts in self-concept, social roles, and daily routines. Although the arrival of a new baby is often a joyful event, the postpartum period can also be a time of heightened psychosocial stress and health behavior changes, including significant sleep disruption and decreased physical activity. Markers of allostatic load, such as physiologica…
Compassion in a heartbeat: Physiology during couples’ loss discussions
The physiology of compassion, typically studied in individuals, has not yet been studied dyadically and in the context of close relationships. The current study used dating partners’ discussions of personal losses to simultaneously investigate the physiological profile of compassion in an individual sharing an emotionally salient loss, the “narrator,” and his or her partner, the “listener.” In a given moment, listeners who perceived themselves as…
Correlates and characteristics of adolescents' encoded emotional arousal during family conflict
Associations between adolescents' range of fundamental frequency, cortisol output, and self-reported emotional experience were examined during problem discussions with parents. Participants are a community-based sample of 56 boys and girls in a longitudinal study on conflict exposure. Results reveal that higher aggregate levels of range of fundamental frequency are associated with higher cortisol output and higher levels of self-reported negative…
For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states
Although a majority of adults live with a close relationship partner, little is known about whether and how partners' momentary affect and physiology covary, or "coregulate." This study used a dyadic multilevel modeling approach to explore the coregulation of spouses' mood states and cortisol levels in 30 married couples who sampled saliva and reported on mood states 4 times per day for 3 days. For both husbands and wives, own cortisol level was …
The transition to parenthood as a critical window for adult health
Becoming a parent is a transformative experience, marked by hormonal changes and neuroplasticity as well as shifts in self-concept, social roles, and daily routines. Although the arrival of a new baby is often a joyful event, the postpartum period can also be a time of heightened psychosocial stress and health behavior changes, including significant sleep disruption and decreased physical activity. Markers of allostatic load, such as physiologica…
For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states
Although a majority of adults live with a close relationship partner, little is known about whether and how partners' momentary affect and physiology covary, or "coregulate." This study used a dyadic multilevel modeling approach to explore the coregulation of spouses' mood states and cortisol levels in 30 married couples who sampled saliva and reported on mood states 4 times per day for 3 days. For both husbands and wives, own cortisol level was …
Associations between language style matching and relationship commitment and satisfaction: An integrative data analysis
Language style matching (LSM) refers to similarity in function word use between two people during a conversation. Previous research has shown that LSM predicts romantic relationship stability, but it remains unknown why LSM is associated with stability. Across five studies from five different labs, we aimed to identify links between LSM and two relationship perceptions strongly associated with stability: commitment and satisfaction. Based on prio…
Differences in infant negative affectivity during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This longitudinal study compared infant temperament rated at 3 months postpartum by 263 United‐States‐based women who gave birth during the COVID‐19 pandemic and 72 who gave birth prior to the pandemic. All women completed questionnaires assessing perinatal mental health, social contact, and infant temperament. Mothers whose infants were born during the pandemic reported higher levels of infant negative affectivity as compared with mothers whose …
Longitudinal Associations Between Family Aggression, Externalizing Behavior, and the Structure and Function of the Amygdala
Using longitudinal data from 21 adolescents, we assessed family aggression (via mother, father, and youth report) in early adolescence, externalizing behavior in mid-adolescence, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in late adolescence. Amygdalae were manually traced, and used as seed regions for resting state analyses. Both family aggression and subsequent externalizing behavior predicted larger right amygdala volumes and stronger amygdala-…
Compassion in a heartbeat: Physiology during couples’ loss discussions
The physiology of compassion, typically studied in individuals, has not yet been studied dyadically and in the context of close relationships. The current study used dating partners’ discussions of personal losses to simultaneously investigate the physiological profile of compassion in an individual sharing an emotionally salient loss, the “narrator,” and his or her partner, the “listener.” In a given moment, listeners who perceived themselves as…
For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states
Although a majority of adults live with a close relationship partner, little is known about whether and how partners' momentary affect and physiology covary, or "coregulate." This study used a dyadic multilevel modeling approach to explore the coregulation of spouses' mood states and cortisol levels in 30 married couples who sampled saliva and reported on mood states 4 times per day for 3 days. For both husbands and wives, own cortisol level was …
Correlates and characteristics of adolescents' encoded emotional arousal during family conflict
Associations between adolescents' range of fundamental frequency, cortisol output, and self-reported emotional experience were examined during problem discussions with parents. Participants are a community-based sample of 56 boys and girls in a longitudinal study on conflict exposure. Results reveal that higher aggregate levels of range of fundamental frequency are associated with higher cortisol output and higher levels of self-reported negative…
Longitudinal Associations Between Family Aggression, Externalizing Behavior, and the Structure and Function of the Amygdala
Using longitudinal data from 21 adolescents, we assessed family aggression (via mother, father, and youth report) in early adolescence, externalizing behavior in mid-adolescence, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in late adolescence. Amygdalae were manually traced, and used as seed regions for resting state analyses. Both family aggression and subsequent externalizing behavior predicted larger right amygdala volumes and stronger amygdala-…
The transition to parenthood as a critical window for adult health
Becoming a parent is a transformative experience, marked by hormonal changes and neuroplasticity as well as shifts in self-concept, social roles, and daily routines. Although the arrival of a new baby is often a joyful event, the postpartum period can also be a time of heightened psychosocial stress and health behavior changes, including significant sleep disruption and decreased physical activity. Markers of allostatic load, such as physiologica…
Compassion in a heartbeat: Physiology during couples’ loss discussions
The physiology of compassion, typically studied in individuals, has not yet been studied dyadically and in the context of close relationships. The current study used dating partners’ discussions of personal losses to simultaneously investigate the physiological profile of compassion in an individual sharing an emotionally salient loss, the “narrator,” and his or her partner, the “listener.” In a given moment, listeners who perceived themselves as…
The buddy system: A randomized controlled experiment of the benefits and costs of dieting in pairs
A total of 67 pairs of female roommates were randomized into a diet condition: (1) both ate normally; (2) one dieted, the other ate normally; and (3) both dieted. Adherence, weight loss, anxiety, depression, disordered eating symptoms, and stress were measured. Dieters lost more weight than non-dieters, but average loss was <1 pound. Pairs where both dieted reported higher anxiety, depression, and disordered eating than one-dieter pairs. Structur…
Interpersonal Processes and the Development of Emotion Dysregulation
Emotion regulation and dysregulation often unfold within interpersonal contexts. Parent–child relationships provide early scaffolding of emotion regulation processes. Parents attune to, and influence, their children’s emotions, through pathways such as physical touch, infant cry, facial expressions, and stress physiology. Interpersonal emotion regulation and dysregulation processes continue to evolve within other close relationship contexts such …
Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies
Significance What predicts how happy people are with their romantic relationships? Relationship science—an interdisciplinary field spanning psychology, sociology, economics, family studies, and communication—has identified hundreds of variables that purportedly shape romantic relationship quality. The current project used machine learning to directly quantify and compare the predictive power of many such variables among 11,196 romantic couples. P…
Associations between language style matching and relationship commitment and satisfaction: An integrative data analysis
Language style matching (LSM) refers to similarity in function word use between two people during a conversation. Previous research has shown that LSM predicts romantic relationship stability, but it remains unknown why LSM is associated with stability. Across five studies from five different labs, we aimed to identify links between LSM and two relationship perceptions strongly associated with stability: commitment and satisfaction. Based on prio…
The Future of Women in Psychological Science
There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field’s investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women’s career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issu…
Differences in infant negative affectivity during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This longitudinal study compared infant temperament rated at 3 months postpartum by 263 United‐States‐based women who gave birth during the COVID‐19 pandemic and 72 who gave birth prior to the pandemic. All women completed questionnaires assessing perinatal mental health, social contact, and infant temperament. Mothers whose infants were born during the pandemic reported higher levels of infant negative affectivity as compared with mothers whose …
Behavioral and neural evidence for difficulty recognizing masked emotional faces
Facial emotion recognition is vital for human social behavior. During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks were widely adopted for viral mitigation and remain crucial public health tools. However, questions persist about their impact on emotion recognition and neural processing, especially in children, parents, and young adults. We developed the Masked Affective and Social Cognition task, featuring masked and unmasked faces displaying fear, sadness,…
Intrinsic resting-state connectivity and personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood
New fatherhood is marked by profound psychological and neural transformations. While these changes can be stressful, many fathers also report increased life satisfaction associated with parenthood. Personal meaning-the subjective sense that life has purpose, meaning, and coherence-may reflect positive adaptation to parenthood. This study investigated how personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood is associated with both psychological an…
Prenatal Expectations and Postpartum Reality: How Gender Egalitarianism in Infant Care Division Shapes Parenting Stress and Relationship Functioning
Prior research has found that mothers report greater relationship satisfaction when couples divide infant care more equally, but less is known about how parents arrive at their division of infant care. The present study examines the expectations for infant care that first-time coparents formulate together during pregnancy, how these expectations compare to their reported division of infant care at six months postpartum, how these expectations dif…
Psychology (13 works) · Developmental psychology (9 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (5 works) · Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum (4 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Psychiatry (3 works) · Anxiety (2 works)