Sara M Levens

Sara M. Levens is an associate professor of Psychology at the UNC Charlotte. After receiving her Ph.D. from New York University, she completed postdoctoral positions at Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. She directs the Levens Emotion and Cognition lab, which examines the role of emotion and cognition in a wide range of intrapersonal and interpersonal processes that affect behavior. Current lines of research span various disciplines and explore the role of emotion generation and regulation in mental and physical health, health behavior change, health communication, political attitudes and beliefs, social movements, and emotion contagion over social media. As an interdisciplinary affective scientist, Dr. Levens uses a range of methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches, including survey design, experimental design, neuroimaging, intervention development, text processing and natural language processing, social media analysis, and behavioral research with special populations. Dr. Levens has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Cancer Research United Kingdom, and the Department of Defense.