Belinda Campos
Dr. Belinda Campos is Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicano/Latino Studies at UC Irvine, as well as an affiliate of the School of Medicine PRIME-LC Program and the Department of Psychological Science in the School of Social Ecology. At UCI, she directs the Culture, Relationships & Health Lab, which studies factors that promote high-quality relationships with a particular focus on understanding how sociocultural context shapes relationship experiences in ways that benefit health.
In three inter-related lines of research, Dr. Campos studies (a) factors and processes that characterize high-quality relationships, (b) positive emotions and their expressive displays, and (c) whether sociocultural contexts that emphasize prioritizing others before the self shape relationships in ways that benefit psychological and physical health. The findings of her work show that sociocultural contexts that emphasize prioritizing others before the self (e.g., Latino and East Asian) can be beneficial for relationships and protective of health. These findings highlight the benefits of relationship patterns that have been understudied and/or regarded as “deficits” in a U.S. culture that prioritizes the self more than ever before.
Dr. Campos’ research is recognized for generating novel insights that advance scientific understanding of culture, positive emotions, relationships, and the link of relationships with health. Her work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, and UC Mexus.
Dr. Campos has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. After completing her Ph.D., she held postdoctoral appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Anthropology.
