Stephanie Brown is an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at SUNY Stony Brook at the Center for Medical Humanities in Preventive Medicine, and she holds a joint appointment at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph. D. in Social Psychology from Arizona State University. Dr. Brown’s research includes a series of empirical papers and NSF and NIH-funded projects suggesting that the health benefits of social contact are due to the provision, as opposed to the receipt, of social support. Currently, Dr. Brown is examining physiological mechanisms that account for this effect as well as implications for the darker side of human experience including depression, suicidality, and PTSD. These lines of research are designed to shed light into the mechanisms underlying a caregiving motivational system, including its evolutionary origins.
Research Projects
- Science of Generosity: Causes, Manifestations and Consequences of Generous Behaviors
- The Social Contagion of Generosity
- The Family Cycle of Kindness and Generosity
- Religious Institutions and Generosity: Catholicism and Islam
- The Inherent Sociality of Giving and Altruism
- Attachment Formation, Compassion and Generosity
- Does Microfinancing Promote Generosity?
- The Foundations of Marital Generosity
- The Neural Circuitry Underlying Altruistic Behavior
- Generosity from an Intercultural Perspective
- The Causes and Effects of Workplace Generosity
- The Causes of Intergenerational Generosity
- The Development of Prosocial Behavior
- The Socioeconomic Basis of Generosity in Britain