Faculty
Research
Interests
Learn more at my lab web page
My research spans multiple areas of interest, while maintaining a core research program focused on the interplay between cognition and emotion in the context of psychological disorders, especially depression and anxiety disorders. More specifically, my research program attempts to integrate biological and psychological lines of inquiry in order to gain a better understanding of the role that cognitive processes and stress reactivity play in the onset and maintenance of major depressive disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD). To this end, I pursue several interrelated lines of investigation. These include studies of biased processing of emotional stimuli (interpretation, memory, etc.) and of mechanisms underlying such biases, stress reactivity, and emotion regulation. Depression and anxiety disorders are the most prevalent of psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, SAD and MDD commonly are comorbid, and share many common characteristics. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms of one disorder may also help in understanding the other disorder.
Selected publications
Thorpe, G. L., Sigmon, S. T., & Yoon, K. L. (in press). Agoraphobia and panic disorder. In V. S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (2nd. ed.). Oxford: Elsevier.
Joormann, J., Yoon, K. L., & Siemer, M. (in press). Cognition, attention and emotion regulation. In A. Kring & D. Sloan (Eds.), Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology. NY, New York: Guilford Press.
Yoon, K. L., Hong, S. W., Joormann, J., & Kang, P. (2009). Perception of facial expressions of emotion during binocular rivalry. Emotion, 9, 172-182.
Yoon, K. L., Joormann, J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2009). Judging the intensity of facial expressions of emotion: Depression-related biases in the processing of positive affect. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 223-228.
Yoon, K. L., & Zinbarg, R. E. (2008). Interpreting neutral faces as threatening: A default mode for social anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 117, 680-685.
Zinbarg, R. E., & Yoon, K. L. (2008). Clinical disorders: Anxiety and depression in P. J. Corr (Ed.), The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Yoon, K. L., & Zinbarg, R. E. (2007). Threat is in the eye of the beholder: Social anxiety and the interpretation of neutral facial expressions. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 839-847.
Yoon, K. L., Fizgerald, D. A., Angstadt, R., McCarron, R., & Phan, K. L. (2007). Amygdala reactivity to emotional faces at high and low intensity in generalized social phobia: A 4T functional MRI study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging,154, 93-98.
Yoon, K. L., & Zinbarg, R. E. (2007). Generalized anxiety disorder and entry into marriage or a marriage-like relationship. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 955-965.
Zinbarg, R. E., Lee, J. E., & Yoon, K. L. (2007). Dyadic predictors of outcome in a cognitive-behavioral program for patients with generalized anxiety disorder in committed relationships: A “spoonful of sugar” and a dose of non-hostile criticism may help. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 699-713.
Joormann, J., Yoon, K. L., & Zetsche, U. (2007). Cognitive inhibition in depression. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 12, 128-139.
Quartana, P. J., Yoon, K. L., & Burns, J. W. (2007). Anger suppression, ironic processes and pain. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 30, 455-469.
