Joanne Wood

BA (Wisconsin), MA, PhD (California, Los Angeles)

Recipient, 2023, Distinguished Professor Emerita

Recipient, 2017, University Professor (a title bestowed by the university to recognize “exceptional scholarly achievement and international pre-eminence,” currently held by 16 faculty members)

Recipient, 2015 Outstanding Performance Award

Recipient, 2015 Excellence in Research Award, Faculty of Arts

Recipient, 2007 Outstanding Performance Award

Research interests
My current research focuses on interpersonal interactions and close relationships—in particular, how relationship processes are shaped by personality dimensions and social contexts. For example, my collaborators and I have studied how dispositional self-esteem—-one’s overall feelings about oneself—-affects people’s willingness to reveal themselves to others through self-disclosure, how self-esteem and trait agreeableness interact to influence the negativity of one’s disclosures, and how self-esteem and agreeableness affect relationship quality.

Selected recent publications
Wood, J. V., Forest, A. L., Friesen, J. P., Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., & McNulty, J. K. (2023). Self-esteem and romantic relationship quality. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(1), 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00247-z

Forest, A. L., Sigler, K. N., Bain, K. S., O’Brien, E. R., & Wood, J. V. (2023). Self-esteem’s impacts on intimacy-building: Pathways through self-disclosure and responsiveness. Current Opinion in Psychology, 52, 101596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101596

Fisher, A.N., Stinson, D.A., Wood, J.V., Holmes, J.G., & Cameron, J.J. (2021). Singlehood and attunement of self-esteem to friendships. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620988460

Cortes, K. & Wood, J. V. (2019). How was your day? Conveying care, but under the radar, for people lower in trust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 83, 11-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.03.003
McCarthy, M. H., Wood, J.V., & Holmes, J.G. (2017). Dispositional pathways to trust: Self-esteem and agreeableness interact to predict trust and negative emotional disclosure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 95-116.

Wood, J. V. & Forest, A. L. (2016). Self-protective yet self-defeating: The paradox of low self-esteem people's self-disclosures. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 53, 131-181. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.

Forest, A.L., Kille, D.R., Wood, J.V., & Holmes, J.G. (2014). Discount and disengage: How chronic negative expressivity undermines partner responsiveness to negative disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 107, 1013-1032.

Forest, A.L., & Wood, J. V. (2012). When social networking is not working: Individuals with low self-esteem recognize but do not reap the benefits of self-disclosing on Facebook. Psychological Science, 23, 295–302.