Front Row: Julie Parsons, Saniya Wu, Karen Prager, Michaiah Gartner, Lauren Bernal, & Hannah Schepps
Lab Director
KAREN PRAGER, PHD
Phone: 972-883-2353
Email: kprager@utdallas.edu
BBS Profile page
Karen J. Prager, PhD, A.B.P.P. is Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies. Dr. Prager is Board-Certified in Couple and Family Psychology and maintains a part-time private psychological practice in addition to her full-time commitment to UT-Dallas. She published The Psychology of Intimacy in 1995 on the developmental, social, and cultural contexts within which intimate relationships thrive. In 2014, she published The Dilemmas of Intimacy, which laid out effective assessment and treatment approaches for helping couples cope with thorny intimacy issues arising in their relationships. Her research interests have focused on the ways that couples maintain satisfying, harmonious, and stable relationships for a lifetime, with a current focus on reconciliation strategies that couples use following conflict and the effectiveness of those strategies.
Doctoral Students
SIRI WILDER
Siri joined the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences graduate program at UT Dallas in Fall, 2019. Her previous research focused on sexual satisfaction and regret in casual sex relationships; in the future, she would like to examine relationship functioning in committed relationships.
SANIYA (SINING) WU
Saniya is currently a fourth-year graduate student in the psychology program at UT Dallas. She joined the team in the fall of 2015. Her research interests are conflict recovery, autonomy support, and what makes some partners feel more intimate and understanding in their relationships than other partners.
Master’s Students
ALEX CARILLO
Alex is a first-year master’s student in the psychology program. He joined the lab in the spring 2018 semester while he was an undergraduate at UT Dallas. His research interests include adult attachment orientation, sexual satisfaction, and reconciliation after conflict. He is particularly interested in the effectiveness of make-up sex. Upon completing the master’s program, Alex hopes to continue to a doctoral program in clinical psychology.
HAOYU LIN
Starting in the fall of 2019, Haoyu Lin will be a second-year master’s student in psychology and she focuses on relationships and well-being. She is working on her master’s project, which studies if the association between authenticity in relationships and relationship satisfaction is stronger in the American population than in the Chinese population.
Undergraduate Students
NAWAAL NAZ AKHWAND
Nawaal is an undergraduate senior at UT Dallas studying psychology. She hopes to pursue a doctorate in counseling psychology after she graduates.
RACHEL CALDERON
Rachel is an undergraduate senior majoring in psychology. She joined Dr. Karen Prager’s Couples Daily Lives lab in fall 2019. Rachel hopes to study clinical psychology after she graduates.
LILLIAN (LILING) CHEN
Lillian is an undergraduate junior majoring in biology and minoring in psychology. She joined Dr. Prager’s Couples Daily Lives lab in the fall of 2019. She hopes to pursue a career in medicine after she graduates.
ALICIA YUSING PAN
Alicia is an undergraduate psychology student graduating in 2021. She joined Dr. Prager’s lab in the spring of 2018. She has been a second author on a poster that was presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology national conference in 2019. She hopes to one day pursue a career in Abnormal Psychology and Trauma.
SHRINA PATEL
Shrina is a senior undergraduate student majoring in neuroscience and minoring in public health and set to graduate in May 2021. She joined Dr. Prager’s lab in May of 2020. She plans to pursue a career in medicine after graduation and hopes to specialize in dermatology.