Sheldon Cohen

Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology, Emeritus

Areas of Expertise

Health Psychology, Social Psychology

Bio

Dr. Cohen's work focuses on the roles of stress and social support systems in health and well-being. He has published pioneering theoretical and empirical work on the effects of aircraft noise on health and development of school children, and on the roles of stress and social networks in physical and mental health. During the last 25 years, he has been studying the effects of stress, affect, and social support on immunity and susceptibility to infectious disease. His experimental laboratory work focuses on establishing the neuroendocrine (hormonal) pathways that may link psychological states to alterations in the immune system, while his correlational work focuses on identifying neuroendocrine, immune, and behavioral pathways that link stress, personality, and social networks to disease susceptibility. His classic work on the role of psychosocial factors in susceptibility to the common cold has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Publications

Complete List of Publications

Google Scholar Page

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., Turner, R. B., Marsland, A. L., Casselbrant, M. L., Li-Korotky, H-S, Epel, E. S., & Doyle, W. J. (in press, 2013). Childhood Socioeconomic Status, Telomere Length, and Susceptibility to Upper Respiratory Infection. Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., Turner, R. B., Casselbrant, M. L., Li-Korotky, H-S., Epel, E. S. & Doyle, W. J. (2013). Association between telomere length and experimentally induced upper respiratory viral infection in healthy adults. Journal of the American Medical Association, 309, 699-705.

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., Doyle, W. J., Miller, G. E., Frank, E., Rabin, B. S., and Turner, R. B. (2012). Chronic stress, glucocorticoid receptor resistance, inflammation and disease risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 5995-5999.

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., Crittenden, C. & Sneed, R. (2012) Personality and human immunity. In S.C.Segerstrom (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Psychoneuroimmunology (pp. 146-169). New York: Oxford University Press.

Cohen, S., & Janicki-Deverts, D. (2012). Who's stressed? Distributions of psychological stress in the United States in probability samples from 1983, 2006 and 2009. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42, 1320-1334.