Laura Carstensen

Laura Carstensen is a licensed clinical psychologist, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and a CHP/PCOR associate. Her research focuses on motivational and emotional changes in adulthood. Most recently, she has published research showing the ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing in older adults. In collaboration with CHP/PCOR director Alan Garber, she is studying motivational influences on medical decision-making. She previously served as the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

She is chair of the External Scientific Advisory Committee for the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, and is chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Future Directions in Social, Personality and Developmental Psychology and Aging.

In 2003, she was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow. She received a BS from the University of Rochester and a MA and PhD from West Virginia University. She also completed a clinical psychology residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.