Emma Adam
Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
IPR Fellow (on leave 2024–25)
PhD, Child Psychology, University of Minnesota, 1998
Adam received her PhD in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. An applied developmental psychobiologist, Emma Adam has been with Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy since 2000. She studies how everyday life experiences in home, school, and work settings influence levels of perceived and biological stress in adolescents and young adults. Her work traces the pathways by which stress "gets under the skin" to contribute to youth outcomes. By using noninvasive methods such as diary measures of stress, measurement of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, and measurement of sleep hours and quality, she is identifying the key factors that cause emotional and biological stress in adolescents and young adults and the implications of stress for daily functioning, emotional and physical health, cognition, and academic outcomes.
Adam’s work has revealed racial and socioeconomic disparities in stress, cortisol and sleep, with potential implications for understanding disparities in health and attainment. Adam’s recent theoretical models and current program of research are focused on understanding the impact of race-based stress on youth stress, stress biology and developmental outcomes. She is also currently testing several interventions aimed at improving youth health and academic outcomes by reducing perceived stress, regulating stress biology, and promoting race-based coping resources, such as a strong ethnic and racial identity.
Adam is a member of the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society of Research on Adolescence, and the American Psychological Association and is the President of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Adam’s research has been supported by multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Sloan Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. Adam was a William T. Grant Faculty Scholar and received the Curt Richter Award from the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Her latest research on race-based disparities in stress and academic outcomes was funded by a Lyle Spencer Research Award from the Spencer Foundation and her research on the impact of mindfulness on youth emotional wellbeing is funded by NIH.
Current Research
Youth Mindful Awareness Project (YMAP). In collaboration with Dr. Richard Zinbarg in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern, and collaborators at UCLA and Vanderbilt, Adam is examining the impact of weekly mindfulness coaching and practice on adolescent mood and on symptoms and diagnoses of anxiety and depression. The study, a multi-phase randomized control trial, is funded by NIH.
Trends In Adolescent and Young Adult Depression and Anxiety (TAYADA). In secondary analyses of existing large datasets, Adam, collaborating with IPR economist Hannes Schwandt and post-doctoral scholar Sarah Collier Villaume, are examining changes in youth depression and anxiety over historic time, attempting to isolate the factors driving increases in depression for youth, as well as age disparities In depression, with adolescents and young adults experiencing greater symptoms and diagnoses of depression and anxiety than middle-aged and older adults.
Biology, Identity and Opportunity (BIO) Study. In this project, funded by the Lyle B. Spencer Research Grant from the Spencer Foundation, Adam, along with IPR social psychologist Mesmin Destin and Adriana Umaña-Taylor from the Harvard University School of Education, is measuring how racial and ethnic stressors affect the stress hormone cortisol, sleep hours, sleep quality, cognition, and academic outcomes in a group of 300 high school freshman. Students are being recruited in the 9th grade and are followed across high school. Adam and her team will also work to improve regulation of stress biology and related academic and health outcomes through application of a random-assignment intervention. One group of students will be randomly assigned to an eight-week program designed by Umaña-Taylor that promotes exploring one's identity with respect to culture, heritage, and race. Another group will receive eight weekly sessions on college and career planning. The researchers will look at the impact of these programs on stress biology and sleep, student well-being, and academic outcomes such as grades and high school graduation rates.
Selected Publications
Adam, E. 2023. Natural disasters as natural experiments: Lessons for human stress science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 120(44): e2316231120.
McMahon, T., S. Collier-Villaume, and E. Adam. 2023. Daily experiences and adolescent affective wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic: The CHESS model. Current Opinion in Psychology 101654.
Adam, E., S. Collier Villaume, S. Thomas, L. Doane, and K. Grant. 2023. Stress and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity in adolescence and early adulthood. In APA handbook of adolescent and young adult development, 55–72, eds. L. Crockett, G. Carlo, and J. Schulenberg (American Psychological Association).
Collier Villaume, S., J. Stephens, E. Nwafor, A. Umaña-Taylor, and E. Adam. 2021. High parental education protects against changes in adolescent stress and mood early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Adolescent Health 69(4): 549–56.
Stephens, J., C. Kessler, C. Buss, G. Miller, W. Grobman, A. Border, L. Keenan-Devlin, and E. Adam. 2020. Early and current life adversity: Past and present influences on maternal diurnal cortisol rhythms during pregnancy. Developmental Psychobiology 63(2): 303–19.
Adam, E., E. Hittner, S. Thomas, S. Collier Villaume, and E. Nwafor. 2020. Racial discrimination and ethnic racial identity in adolescence as modulators of HPA axis activity. Development and Psychopathology 32(5): 1669–84.
Adam, E., S. Collier Villaume, and E. Hittner. 2020. Reducing stress disparities: Shining new light on pathways to equity through the study of stress biology. In Confronting Inequality: How Policies and Practices Shape Children’s Opportunities, eds. L. Tach, R. Dunifon, & D. Miller (Washington: APA Books).
Hittner, E., and E. Adam. 2020. Emotional pathways to the biological embodiment of racial discrimination experiences. Psychosomatic Medicine 82(4): 420–31.
Heissel, J., E. Adam, J. Doleac, D. Figlio, and J. Meer. 2019. Testing, stress, and performance: How students respond physiologically to high-stakes testing. Education Finance and Policy 16(2): 183–208.
Doane, L. , M. Sladek, and E. Adam. 2018. An introduction to cultural neurobiology: Evidence from physiological stress systems. In The Handbook of Culture and Biology: Bridging Evolutionary Adaptation and Development, 227–54, eds. J. Causadias, E. Telzer, and N. Gonzales (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley).
Heissel, J., P. Sharkey, G. Torrats-Espinosa, K. Grant, and E. Adam. 2018. Violence and vigilance: The acute effects of community violent crime on sleep and cortisol. Child Development 89(4): e323–e31.
