On September 22nd, 2025, one of our fantastic lab members, Evan Rooney, successfully proposed his dissertation titled "Executive Functioning, Distress Tolerance, and Maladaptive Health Behaviors Among US College Students." We are looking forward to collecting data in the near future and seeing him complete this important work. Below is a brief summary of the forthcoming project:
Maladaptive health behaviors, including smoking, vaping, and smokeless tobacco use, are common among young adults (Daw et al., 2017; Goldstein et al., 2015; Lanza & Teeter, 2018). Efforts to address nicotine use behaviors among young adults should focus on malleable therapeutic targets to help youth effectively manage negative emotions and make healthy choices, such as distress tolerance and executive functioning skills. Distress tolerance (DT) is a broad construct focusing on an individual’s ability to withstand the experience of uncomfortable stimuli across multiple domains (e.g., emotional distress, physical discomfort, frustration, uncertainty, and ambiguity; Veilleux, 2023; Zvolensky et al., 2011). This process requires the use of cognitive resources to override prepotent responses, delay gratification, and pursue goal-directed behavior all of which fall under the category of executive functioning (EF; Andrés et al., 2021). In particular, the EF skill of inhibitory control allows individuals to stop themselves from acting reflexively and use top-down processing to engage in goal-directed behavior (Andrés et al., 2021). Across previous research examining DT, EF, and health behaviors within the same model, no study measured DT and EF skills via both performance-based and self-report measures. This presents a particular issue as self-report and behavioral measures have been purported to measure different aspects of these constructs, with self-report DT measures indicating perceptions of one’s own DT abilities as opposed to persistence within distressing situations (Veilleux et al., 2019; Veilleux, 2023) and self-report EF measures corresponding better with trait or personality differences as opposed to measurable differences in EF skills (Buchanan, 2016; Toplak et al., 2013). The lack of research examining the role of both self-report and behavioral measures of DT and EF in association with health behaviors precludes researchers’ ability to disentangle the role of perceptions compared to measurable skill deficits in determining risk for maladaptive health behaviors. The present study will examine the associations between both performance-based and self-report measures of inhibitory control, DT, and self-reported maladaptive health behaviors among college students with the goal of understanding how cognitive, emotional, and behavioral factors are related to health behaviors commonly associated with stress (e.g., nicotine use).