Paul Hastings
Lab Director
Pronouns: he/him/his
Email: pdhastings@ucdavis.edu
Most of my research interests center around understanding the ways in which biological and environmental factors shape the trajectories of children’s emotional and social development. This focus encompasses normal and adaptive development, such as the physiological arousal experienced by healthy and well-functioning children when they experience various emotions. It also extends to atypical and maladaptive development, such as the difficulties experienced by anxious children when they enter a daycare or preschool, if their parents have not effectively prepared them for these kinds of social and academic challenges. Among the lines of research I intend to develop at UC Davis are (a) the development of individual differences in the relations between emotion, physiological regulation and temperament and their implications for children’s emotional and behavioral problems; (b) gender differences in biology and socialization experiences contributing to divergent trajectories of prosocial development; (c) the implications of the early development of emotion regulation for social competence, school readiness and academic success; (d) the links between family and peer relationships and the mental health and well-being of sexual minority youth from ethnic and cultural minority groups; and (e) parents’ strategies for promoting children’s positive development across structurally and sociodemographically diverse family contexts.