Philip R Costanzo, Professor

Research Summary:

Research Interests: Research interests include (1) The development of children's ideas and beliefs about the social environment. This includes an interest in the underlying cognitive processes that mediate social reasoning skills, the relationship between parental beliefs and values and children's social perceptions social competence and social rule acquisition and its relationship to social conformity. (2) The relationships between adult values and motivations and depressive states. Also, how social-cognitive biases pertinent to affective disorders develop and are socialized by parental norms and family systems properties. (3) Psychological and social concomitants of obesity, overeating, self-restrictive eating, anorexia and bulimia. Particularly concerned with the relationship between cultural and sex-role norms pertaining to women and the emergence of eating disorders.

Clinical Interests: Community-school consultation, group psychotherapy, psycho- and "socio"-therapy with troubled and troublesome children and their families, individual adult psychotherapy and therapeutic strategies for working with distressed eating-disordered clients.

Representative Publications:   (More Publications)

1. Miller- Johnson, S., Costanzo, P.R. (2004). If you can't beat 'em --- induce them to join you: Peer based interventions during adolescence. Developmental Psychopathology: A Festchift in honor of John Coie.
2. with Miller Johnson, S., Costanzo, P.R., Coie, J. and Browne, D. (2003 in press). Peer relations and involvement in problem behaviors among African-American adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
3. E. Arrendondo, K.I. Pollak, P.R. Costanzo, M McNeilly & E. Myers (2003). Primary care residents' characteristics and motives for providing differential medical treatment of cervical cancer screening. Journal of the National Medical Association, 95(7), 577-585.
4. S. Miller-Johnson, P.R. Costanzo et al. (2003). Peer social structure and risk taking behaviors among African-American early adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 5, 375-384.
5. with Arrendondo, E., Pollak, K.I., McNeilly, M., and Myers, E. (2003). Primary care residents' characteristics and motives for providing differential medical treatment of cervical cancer screening. Journal of the National Medical Association, 95(7), 577-585.