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Photo by REED HUTCHINSON
Shelly Gable and Chetan Nayak, both UCLA faculty members, with son Eka
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A winner in the lab and at home
BY CYNTHIA LEE AND STUART WOLBERT
UCLA Today
Without setting foot in Las Vegas, Shelly Gable has already hit the jackpot twice this year.
On July 26, Gable, a UCLA social psychologist who studies interpersonal relationships in marriage and dating, was at the White House with 55 other top federally funded researcher-educators from around the country to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Gable was among 20 scientists selected by the National Science Foun-dation and four affiliated with the University of California to receive the highest honor the government gives to exceptional researchers in the early stages of their careers.
“These four UC scientists are emerging leaders in their fields,” said UC President Robert C. Dynes. “I am impressed by the talent and promise possessed by these young researchers and look forward to their future accomplishments.”
The stellar award, however, paled in comparison to the birth of her first baby three months ago, when she and her husband, Chetan Nayak, associate professor of physics, welcomed son Eka (Sanskrit for “Number 1”) into the world. Which thrilled her more? “It was definitely the baby,” she said in an instant.
And how will this busy associate professor of social psychology fit parenthood into her already full life? “I’m hoping to become much more efficient at everything I do,” Gable said. “Short of that, the psychology department at UCLA was smart enough 20 years ago to establish an infant daycare program. It’s nationally recognized as one of the best infant daycares in the country and is integrated into our undergraduate education program.”
Eka will spend his first fall close by at the Fernald Center. “I have a bike that I haven’t used for quite some time,” Gable said. “We’re going to fix it up and take it to the office so I can ride back and forth really quickly to the daycare.”
Relationships between parent and child, roommates, friends and couples are among the human connections that fascinate Gable, who uses multiple methods in her lab, including video observation and Web surveys, to capture people’s daily experiences. She looks at how people interpret ambiguous social comments, weigh incentives and threats in their relationships, and regulate their behavior to maximize positive outcomes and minimize threats.
Her latest research shows that fear of rejection and anxiety about relationships “can actually bring about the very things that people fear,” she said. But those who focus on positive incentives in relationships and are more willing to take risks “tend to be less lonely, more satisfied with their social life and have more positive emotions around their relationships.”
Gable realized the importance of relationships as a graduate student at William and Mary. “I was interested in daily emotions and how different types of everyday events led to changes in emotion and well-being,” she said. She soon discovered that emotional events were primarily driven by the relationships. “People who have strong social bonds tend to live longer, be happier and thrive more economically.”
For now, Gable’s challenge is to fit family time in with teaching assignments, the demands of research and travel to conferences. “If one of us has a conference to go to, we’re all planning to go,” she said, “at least for awhile. It’s a good way to see the world.”
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