Laura L. Carstensen, MA, PhD
Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Professor of Psychology, and CHP/PCOR Associate
Department of Psychology
Stanford University
Building 420, Room 167
Stanford, CA 94305-2130
Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D., is a member of the Psychology Department at Stanford University, where she is also Founding Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy. For more than twenty years her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, and in 2005 she was honored with a MERIT award. Carstensen is best known for socioemotional selectivity theory, a life-span theory of motivation. With her students and colleagues, she has published well over 100 articles on life-span development. Her most current empirical research focuses on ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing.
Dr. Carstensen is a fellow in a number of professional organizations including the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association and the Gerontological Society of America. She serves on the Board of Science Advisors to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany and has chaired two studies for the National Academy of Sciences, resulting in The Aging Mind and When I’m 64. She is a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society.
The recipient of numerous professional awards and honors, she has been selected as a Guggenheim Fellow, received the Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Research and the Distinguished Career Award from the Gerontological Society of America, as well as Stanford University's Deans Award for Distinguished Teaching. Professor Carstensen received her B.S. from the University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from West Virginia University.
Stanford Departments
Psychology
Publications
The 5 most recent are displayed. More publications »
- Policies and Politics for an Aging America
The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society, John (Jack) W. Rowe, Laura L. Carstensen
Contexts vol. 9, 1 (2010) - Following Your Heart or Your Head: Focusing on Emotions versus Information Differentially Influences the Decisions of Younger and Older Adults
Joseph A. Mikels, Lockenhoff CE, Maglio SJ, Laura L. Carstensen, Mary K. Goldstein, Alan M. Garber
Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied vol. 16, 1 (2010) - Facts and Fictions About an Aging America
John (Jack) W. Rowe, Lisa F Berkman, Robert Binstock, Axel Boersch-Supan, John Cacioppo, Laura L. Carstensen, Dana Goldman, Linda Fried, James Jackson, Martin Kohli, Jay Olshansky, John Rother
Contexts vol. 8, 4 (2009) - Affect Dynamics, Affective Forecasting, and Aging
Lisbeth Nielsen, Brian Knutson, Laura L. Carstensen
Emotion vol. 8, 3 (2008) - Individual differences in insular sensitvity during loss anticipation predict avoidance learning
Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin, Nick G. Hollon, Laura L. Carstensen, Brian Knutson
Psychol Sci vol. 19, 4 (2008)
Research Programs & Projects
- Center on Advancing Decision Making in Aging (CADMA)
CHP/PCOR Program - Connecting to the Future Self: Using Web-based Virtual Reality to Increase Retirement Saving
CHP/PCOR Project - Do No Harm: Psychological Costs and Benefits of Genetic Testing
CHP/PCOR Project - Exploration-Exploitation and Age
CHP/PCOR Project - Investing in the Future You: Delay Discounting in Younger and Older Adults
CHP/PCOR Project - The Vividness of Your Future Self: Using Immersive Virtual Reality to Increase Retirement Saving
CHP/PCOR Project - Affective Forecasting Across the Lifespan
CHP/PCOR Project (Completed)