Can our interactions with other people, including our partners and family members, affect our immune systems and produce inflammation and pain in the body? Can our conversations literally get under our skin and impact aging?

Stephanie Wilson, Ph.D., assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Psychology, is digging into these research questions in her Study of Health, Aging, and Relationships (SHARE) Lab and is uncovering fascinating (and, perhaps, unexpected) results.

“We have brought couples into the lab and set up conversations between partners about difficult topics. One of the paradigms is conflict,” said Wilson. “In the blood, we see that there are upticks in inflammatory cytokines, and we expect that, over the course of years together, that can end up contributing to inflammation-based diseases.”

Wilson, a Memphis-native, discovered her interest in research during her undergraduate years at Rhodes College and through a transformational post-baccalaureate Pediatric Oncology Education program at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. It wasn’t until her doctoral program at Penn State that she began to bring her areas of interest into focus, though.

“I kept following my nose basically,” she said smiling.

At Penn State, she found a supportive environment of faculty members and peers. Her advisor Lynn Martire, Ph.D., was a social health psychologist who helped illuminate the interdisciplinary opportunities within the field, and, in turn, put Wilson on the path to conducting more research.

“I ended up having a very interdisciplinary identity … spanning social health as well as life span development,” said Wilson.

Then, a post-doctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University College of Medicine introduced her to a fast-growing discipline: psychoneuroimmunology.

“I was really intrigued by the possibility that the emotional quality of our interactions … could penetrate the immune system and the way that it fights against pathogens,” said Wilson. “My mentor—Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D.—was at the ground floor of that sub-field … Now it’s a burgeoning area.”

While at Ohio State, she landed a significant federal grant to study how emotional interactions between couples can produce inflammatory responses (and how that might change over time with age).

That grant helped her secure a faculty position at Southern Methodist University (SMU). Unfortunately, only six months after arriving at SMU, COVID-19 struck. It prompted major shifts in the way she conducted research and generated enormous challenges (especially considering her work involves people interacting with one another). She stuck with it, though, and found ways to make it work. Then, four years later, she accepted a faculty position with UAB’s Department of Psychology.

“I was intrigued by UAB,” said Wilson. She had learned about the University’s reputation for stellar research and interdisciplinary collaboration through her participation in the Gerontological Society of America’s annual conference. This—along with her emerging interest in the Nathan Shock Center, the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, and other multi-site, national studies—led her to apply for an open area faculty position in psychology.

Now, she is in Birmingham continuing her interdisciplinary work and looking for more opportunities to bring it outside of the lab and into the community.

“A big lingering question in this area is, ‘Well, if you don’t set up the experimental paradigm … do you still see the effects?’” she said. In other words, how do couples actually interact when they aren’t in the lab, and how do their immune systems respond?

By monitoring daily interactions in the real world and taking blood samples along the way, Wilson hopes to find that her lab observations are true in daily life as well.

Next up, she aims to secure funds from internal pilot programs to launch a study, so she can better reach people in the community. More work needs to be done to secure the pilot, but Wilson is optimistic. Through this effort, she wants to test some new interventions, particularly with caregivers.

“[We want to encourage] brief, scalable things like gratitude practices, like reminiscence. We’re really interested in targeting shared positive emotions,” said Wilson. “[We’re] really interested in what people can do … to give little boosts in their relationships.”