Sarah L. Tragesser
Assistant Professor
Colorado State University, 2005
Contact Information:
Email: stragesser@tricity.wsu.edu
Office: 207K West, Tri-Cities Campus
Phone: (509) 372-7388
Classes Taught:
- Psychology 350: Social Psychology
- Psychology 401: Historical Development of Psychology
Research Interests:
- Affective Instability
- Interpersonal Problems
- Alcohol Use Disorders
- Electrophysiology
- Substance Abuse Prevention
- Cross-Cultural
My research is centered on the personality features related to emotion regulation, interpersonal problems, and alcohol use, with particular emphasis on affective instability and impulsivity. I use a variety of methods in my research, including neurocognitive measures (i.e., event-related potentials, EEG), ecological momentary assessments and event-based sampling (with palm pilot surveys, acoustic samples), vignettes, and longitudinal survey data. I work from a dimensional perspective, which assumes that most personality and mood disorders are extreme maladaptive variants of normal personality and emotion mechanisms. Therefore, along with my colleagues, I conduct research with both normal and clinical populations, and am interested in these issues in the context of normal adaptive functioning as well as in the service of alleviating mental health problems and their social consequences.
Selected Publications:
Tragesser, S. L., Lippman, L. G., Trull, T. J., & Barrett, K. C. (in prep). Borderline personality disorder features and cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to teasing.
Trull, T.J., Solhan, M. B., Tragesser, S. L., Jahng, S., Wood, P. K., Piasecki, T. M., & Watson, D. (in prep). Affective instability: Measuring a core feature of borderlinepersonality disorder using ecological momentary assessment.
Tragesser, S. L., Solhan, M., Schwartz Mette, R., & Trull, T. J. (in press). The role of affective instability and impulsivity in predicting future BPD features. Journal of Personality Disorders.
Trull, T. J., Tragesser, S. L., Solhan, M., & Schwartz Mette, R. (in press). Dimensional models of personality disorder: DSM-V and beyond. Current Opinion in Psychiatry.
Tragesser, S. L., Sher, K. J., Trull, T. J., & Park, A. (in press). Personality disorder symptoms, drinking motives, and alcohol use and consequences: Cross-sectional and prospective mediation. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.
