Expertise

Topics:  Social Psychology, Health Neuroscience, Neuroscience, Health Psychology, Psychoneuroimmunology

Industries: Writing and Editing, Health and Wellness, Education/Learning, Research

David’s research focuses broadly on understanding what makes people resilient under stress. Specifically, he conducts community intervention studies, laboratory studies of stress and coping, and neuroimaging studies to understand how various stress management strategies alter coping and stress resilience. For example, he is currently working on studies that test how mindfulness meditation training impacts the brain, peripheral stress physiological responses, and stress-related disease outcomes in at-risk community samples. David also explores how the use of simple strategies (self-affirmation, rewarding activities, cognitive reappraisal) can buffer stress and improve problem-solving under pressure.

David has made some recent research forays into other areas, such as in describing the role of unconscious processes in learning and decision making, developing new theory and research on behavioral priming, and in building a new field of health neuroscience.

Media Experience

Stressed by current events? Instead of unplugging, a Pittsburgh psychology researcher says lean in  — WESA
David Creswell (Dietrich College) wants you to embrace the news, not tune it out, for the benefit of your brain. "You’re sort of working through those emotions and turning toward that distress [so] you can start to build those distress tolerance muscles,” said Creswell.

Neuroscientist shares the ‘nonnegotiable’ routine he uses to stay mentally sharp during the day  — CNBC
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these routines, but building success with your sleep schedule is a lot easier than that, says David Creswell, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Carnegie Mellon who studies sleep.

Nightly Sleep Is Key to Student Success  — Carnegie Mellon University News
David Creswell(opens in new window), the William S. Dietrich II Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences(opens in new window), led a team of researchers to evaluate the relationship between sleep and GPA.

The less college students sleep, the worse their grades, study finds  — The Washington Post
Researchers found that every lost hour of average nightly sleep at the start of an academic term was associated with a 0.07-point drop in a student’s end-of-term GPA. When a student slept less than six hours a night, the effect of lost sleep on a student’s grades was even more pronounced, said David Creswell, the lead author of the study and a professor in psychology and neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University.

Loneliness Is Bad for Your Health. An App May Help.  — The New York Times
Because loneliness, like mindfulness, is a subjective state, it’s difficult to make definitive conclusions about why and how a focus on acceptance prompted greater sociability. But David Creswell, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon who conducted the study with the lead author, Emily Lindsay, believes that “the equanimity piece is key.” The poise it teaches, he says, may help people become less self-judgmental, less self-conscious, more amenable to interacting with others.

Just A Few Minutes Of Meditation May Reduce Stress, Study Finds  — Forbes
“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” said lead author J. David Creswell. So he and his team from Carnegie Mellon University set out to determine whether low “doses” of mindfulness might have an effect on the stress response.