Tessa Blevins, B.A.

Tessa Blevins graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2019 with a B.A. in Psychology and minor in English. Throughout her undergraduate career, she worked in three labs conducting research in different areas of the clinical discipline. In the first, Dr. Suzanne Segerstrom's Psychoneuroimmunology lab, she completed two projects resulting in a poster and an Honor's thesis. The former explored the circadian and circannual changes in dispositional optimism, and the latter looked at the relationship between daily and global reports of autonomy in older women. Her second lab experience was in Dr. Christal Badour’s Stress, Trauma, Recovery, and Coping lab where she worked on projects examining the possible mediating effects of dysfunctional coping on peritraumatic dissociation and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Finally, she collaborated with Dr. Sandra Sephton at the University of Louisville to observe lung cancer patients and their willingness to complete an iPod-based mindfulness intervention. After these experiences, she is ultimately interested in what differentiates participants who are willing to undergo interventions versus those unwilling, whether it be biological, physiological, or psychological individual differences.

Arrato, N. A., Lo, S. B., Coker, C. A., Covarrubias, J., Blevins, T., & Andersen, B. L. (under review). Responses to COVID-19 of non-small cell lung cancer patients undergoing treatment vs. non-cancer controls: The salience effect.

Leger, K. A., Blevins, T. R., Crofford, L. J., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2020). Mean levels and variability in psychological well-being and associations with sleep in midlife and older women. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. 1-10.