Research

My research interests

I am an Experimental Psychologist by training. I started with laboratory-based studies and gradually transitioned to examining mechanisms underlying various psychosocial and behavioral patterns with ecological momentary assessment strategies. 

I have three primary research areas. The first area is studying substance use and related psychosocial and behavioral issues for justice-involved individuals. My goal is to reveal transdiagnostic factors and mechanisms underlying substance use-related symptoms and provide prevention and intervention strategies for the escalation of these issues. 

The second area focuses on interpersonal dynamics and affective science. My goal is to study the interpersonal and affective features of individual mental and physical health in an ecological context. 

The third area focuses on adopting various research methodologies to address my research questions. 

Substance use and related psychosocial and behavioral problems for justice-involved individuals

My primary research interests focus on the etiological factors and prevention and intervention strategies for justice-involved individuals with substance-related issues. I like Kenneth J. Sher's approach to describing substance use and substance use disorders. In general, I am interested in studying the treatment process and outcome variables. Recently, I am particularly interested in data phenotyping of substance use and aim to develop a digitally-enabled, artificial intelligence-informed strategy for providing personalized prevention and intervention strategies. I describe my research motto as revealing What, why, when, how, where, and who for the phenomenon of interest (by Rudyard Kipling).

• Knight, D. K., Yang, Y., Joseph, E. D., Tinius, E., Young, S., Shelley, L., Cross, D. R., & Knight, K. (2021). Preventing opioid use among justice-involved youth as they transition to adulthood: Leveraging safe adults (LeSA) protocol paper. BMC Public Health, 21, 2133. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12127-3

• Yang, Y., Gray, J., Joe, G.W., Flynn, P. M., & Knight, K. (2019). Treatment retention, satisfaction, and treatment progress for justice-involved individuals referred to community-based medication-assisted treatment. Substance Use & Misuse, 54(9), 1461-1474. http://doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2019.1586949

• Yang, Y. & Perkins, D. P. (2018). The relation between victimization, attachment, peer support, and drug treatment motivation in a jail-based sample: Mediation and moderation analyses. Psychology, Crime & Law, 24(8), 831-850. http://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2018.1439029

• Yang, Y., Knight, K., Joe, G., Rowan, Lehman, W., & Flynn, P. (2015). Gender as a moderator in predicting re-arrest among treated drug-involved offenders. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 49, 65-70. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2014.08.001

• Yang, Y., Knight, K., Joe, G., Rowan-Szal, Lehman, W., & Flynn, P. M. (2013). The Influence of client risks and treatment engagement on recidivism. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 52, 544-564. http://doi.org/10.1080/10509674.2013.840353

Through my interaction with individuals attending jail-based programs and jail-diversion substance use treatment, I learned that people need specific tools to help them navigate difficult life situations. So, I started to apply positive psychology (i.e., hope, resilience) in developing an intervention curriculum for justice-involved women. I am influenced by James Pennebaker's work on expressive writing and Jane Goodall's work on hope in developing the intervention materials. 

Here are some of my publications growing out of this area of research interest:  

• Yang, Y.(2019). Measuring hope in jail inmates with substance use problems. Journal of Federal Probation, September.

• Stearns, E. A. & Yang, Y. (2021). Women’s peer to peer support inside a jail support group. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 2021;38(11):3288-3309. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075211030333

Interpersonal and Affective aspects of human behaviors and related symptoms 

Keywords: Aggression, victimization, emotion differentiation and regulation, daily life

Most of my research in this area is intended to address three primary questions. First, what are the transdiagnostic factors or transdiagnostic risks underlying interpersonal dynamics? Second, how does the interplay of personality and affect impact interpersonal dynamics?  Third, how do interpersonal and affective aspects of human behaviors impact mental and physical health? An exemplar question is do people with high rejection sensitivity tend to avoid arguments during interpersonal conflict and how does that impact individual health? 

I am influenced by a few giants in psychology, such as Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld and his colleagues, Dr. Emily Butler and her passion for research on emotions and interpersonal dynamics, and Dr. James Gross and his research on emotion regulation.  

Here are some of my publications growing out of this area of research interest:  

• Yang, Y. (2023). A Daily diary study on stressors, hurt feelings, aggression, and somatic symptoms: The role of rejection sensitivity and negative emotion differentiation. Aggressive Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.22076

• Yang, Y. (2022). The association of daily stressors and daily emotions to daily optimism: The role of emotion differentiation. Journal of Individual Differences. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000375

• Yang, Y. (2020). Aggression and somatic symptoms: The role of emotion regulation and distress tolerance. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 27, 466-474. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-020-09885-6

Methodology Interest

In general, I am interested in all types of advanced methodologies and have applied a few different types of methods in analyzing data and addressing research questions.  Here is a list of examples: 

Intensive longitudinal data analysis and ecological momentary assessment

• Yang, Y. (2020). Daily stressor, daily resilience, and daily somatization: The role of trait aggression. Personality and Individual Differences, 165, 110141. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110141 

Random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling

• Yang, Y. (2023). Modeling state- and trait-level associations between aggression, somatic symptoms, substance use, and distress tolerance. Aggressive Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.22096

Analytic strategies for data following non-normal distributions, such as zero-inflated binomial distribution, Poisson distribution

• Yang, Y., Li, M., & Lin, H-C. (2021). Parental psychological control, social capital, substance use, and driving under the influence among college students: sex differences. Journal of Child and Family Studies. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-02036-9

Qualitative Methodology 

• Yang, Y., Pankow, J., Swan, H., Willett, J., Mitchell, S. G., Rudes, D. S., & Knight, K. (2017). Preparing for analysis: A critical step for procedural rigor in large-scale multisite qualitative research studies. Quality & Quantity, 1-14. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-017-0490-y

• Yang, Y., Perkins, D. R., & Stearns, A. E. (2018). A qualitative study on barriers and facilitators to treatment engagement among clients in inpatient substance abuse treatment. Qualitative Health Research, 28(9), 1474-1485. http://doi.org/10.1177/1049732318771005

It is hard to capture my research interests in a short paragraph so I created a word cloud of keywords from my publications (as of July 2023).  Below you will find a carousel of word clouds presenting the top 100, 50, 30, and 10 keywords from my publications.