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Emma Adam

Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
Emma Adam

IPR Fellow

Research Areas:
Education and Human Development, Health Inequalities, Race, Poverty, and Inequality

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 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. She is also testing the impacts of multiple random assignment interventions designed to improve stress-regulation and increase youth wellbeing.  

Adam’s work introduced the concept of “stress disparities” and has revealed racial and socioeconomic disparities in stress, cortisol and sleep, with potential implications for understanding disparities in health and attainment. Her current research is focused on understanding the impact of race-based stress on youth stress, stress biology and developmental outcomes and promoting race-based coping resources, such as strong ethnic and racial identity.   

Adam past president of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Her research has been supported by multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Sloan Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation and Spencer Foundation. Adam was a William T. Grant Faculty Scholar and received the Curt Richter Award from the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Her current research on understanding and reducing race-based disparities in stress and academic outcomes is funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, and her current research on the impact of mindfulness on youth emotional wellbeing is funded by the NIH.  

Current Research

Youth Mindful Awareness Project (YMAP). In collaboration with Dr. Richard Zinbarg in Northwestern’s psychology department, 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.   

Biology, Identity and Opportunity (BIO) Study. In this project, which was previously funded with a Spencer Foundation Lyle B. Spencer Research Grant and currently funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, Adam, with IPR social psychologist Mesmin Destin and Adriana Umaña-Taylor of Stanford University’s 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 422 high school freshman. Students were recruited in ninth grade and followed across high school. This study, a randomized controlled trial, examines the impact of the Identity Project, an intervention designed to promote ethnic-racial-identity exploration, on identity development, stress biology, and youth socioemotional, health and academic outcomes over the four years of high school.  

Selected Publications

Yang, B., Collier Villaume, S., Ellison, R. L., Russak-Pribble, A., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., & Adam, E. K. (in press). Ethnoracial discrimination and subsequent cognitive functioning among adolescents: A two-month follow-up study. Journal of Adolescence. 

Villaume, S. C., Sladek, M. R., Montgomery-Jones, S. M., Nwafor, E. E., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., & Adam, E. K. (2026). Out-of-school replication of the Identity Project: Randomized trial implementation and impacts on adolescent ethnic-racial identity development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 106, 101977. 

Chen, S., Yang, B., Zhou, Z., Vargas, T., Wang, Y., Santaularia Gomez, N. J., Adam, E. K., Haase, C. M., & Qu, Y. (2026). Hippocampal volume moderates the link between racial-ethnic discrimination and early adolescent depression. Clinical Psychological Science. 

Garber, J., Chavira, D. A., Adam, E. K., Craske, M., McMahon, T., Williams, A., Abitante, G., Lanser, I., Pashtunyar, D. S., Chen, S., & Zinbarg, R. (2025). A randomized controlled trial of an online mindfulness program for adolescents at risk for internalizing problems. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 

Koning, S., C. Kessler, T. Canli, E. Duman, E. Adam, R. Zinbarg, M. Craske, J. Stephens, S. Vrshek-Schallhorn. 2024. Early-life adversity severity, timing, and context type are associated with SLC6A4 methylation in emerging adults: Results from a prospective cohort study. Psychoneuroendocrinology170: 107181.  

Del Toro, J., D. Bernard, R. Lee, and E. Adam. 2024. Framing resilience linked to parental ethnic-racial socialization as hidden: A hidden resilience conceptual framework. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 18(7): e12984.  

Villaume, S., J. Stevens, M. Craske, R. Zinbarg, and E. Adam. 2024. Sleep and daily affect and risk for major depression: Day-to-day and prospective associations in late adolescence and early adulthood. Journal of Adolescent Health 74(2): 388–91.  

Villaume, S., S. Chen, and E. Adam. 2023. Age disparities in prevalence of anxiety and depression among US adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open 6(11): e2345073–73.  

Kessler, C., S. Vrshek-Schallhorn, S. Mineka, R. Zinbarg, M. Craske, and E. Adam. 2023. Experiences of adversity in childhood and adolescence and cortisol in late adolescence. Development and Psychopathology 35 (3): 1235–50.  

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.   

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).