People

Dr. Angelo M. DiBello is an Associate Professor in GSAPP’s Applied Psychology department, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Brown University, and is the Director of the Social Health Addiction & Relationship Processes (SHARP) Laboratory at Rutgers University. Dr. DiBello earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology in 2015 from the University of Houston and completed his postdoctoral training in 2017 at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University.

Over the last ten years, I have developed distinct but related lines of research in two areas of applied social health psychology: (1) addictive behaviors and health and (2) romantic relationships and alcohol use. Through both my early clinical work and ongoing research, I have come to understand what I believe are two foundationally important aspects of behavior: (1) that personal attitudes toward a behavior are important predictors/determinants of the behavior, and (2) that when faced with potentially threatening personal information (e.g., about one’s behavior or personal relationship) people often respond defensively and do not recognize the need to change their behavior. Thus, my work aims to leverage social psychological theories to change personal attitudes, reduce defensiveness, and enhance the receptivity and duration of prevention and intervention efforts. These include the use of the theory of cognitive dissonance, social norms theory, and self-affirmation theory. I employ my statistical expertise in mediation, moderation, structural equation modeling (SEM), factor analysis, negative binomial regression, and multivariate analyses in answering my research questions.