I’m an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College. Before coming to Bryn Mawr,  I completed my PhD and Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan.

I study whether ways of regulating one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors are hidden in plain sight, within the words people use to refer to themselves, the relationships they maintain, and the way they interact with their digital environments (i.e., social media). I’m also interested in how such subtle shifts in language, perspective and context can reflect and promote a range of psychological processes — including persuasion and identity conflict. Broadly, my work aims to shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie self-control and leverage this knowledge to improve well-being outside the lab.

My primary training is in social and developmental psychology, but I integrate theories from clinical psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psycholinguistics to develop integrative models of the questions I ask. I also use a variety of tools (e.g., experiments, linguistic analysis, Experience Sampling Methodology) to enrich my understanding of how a phenomenon operates across multiple levels of analysis.

You can learn more about my research by exploring the drop-down menu above. To connect, please email me: aorvell[at]umich.edu.