Shelby Langer

Dr. Langer is a personality/ social psychologist with post-doctoral training in behavioral medicine and cancer control. She is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University, and an affiliate investigator at Mayo Clinic Arizona. Her scholarship focuses on family processes within the context of chronic illness, with work spanning both adult and pediatric illness populations. Her primary line of investigation focuses on communication and emotion regulation among couples coping with advanced cancer. She seeks to understand the intra- and inter-personal consequences of patient and partner communicative behaviors and motivations for such on psychological, relational, and physical health outcomes, and uses multiple methods to do so including technology-based assessment, behavioral observation, and biological sampling. Findings are used to inform the development and testing of behavioral interventions to optimize patient and partner well-being. This research has been funded by awards from the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mayo Clinic - ASU Alliance. Dr. Langer is also an educator, a fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and Immediate Past Chair of the society’s Cancer Special Interest Group, a member of the editorial boards of Annals of Behavioral Medicine and Contemporary Clinical Trials, and a member of the professional advisory board of Cancer Support Community Arizona.