David Lydon-Staley, PhD

David Lydon-Staley is an Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Lydon-Staley’s research focuses on the unfolding of human behavior over short timescales (e.g., moment-to-moment, day-to-day) during the course of everyday life. The ebb and flow of momentary behavior may seem inconsequential, but the minutiae of everyday life, once tallied up over time, become the foundation for more enduring changes in our behavior, environment, and biology that occur on longer (e.g., years, decades) timescales. With this focus on short-term (on the daily or even finer timescales) dynamics in behavior, his research focuses on substance use, emotion regulation, and curiosity across the lifespan, with a particular focus on adolescence. He makes use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), experimental laboratory paradigms, and experience sampling methodologies coupled with intensive-longitudinal data and network analysis techniques.

Lydon-Staley’s work has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Jacobs Foundation, the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, the Center for Curiosity, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. He received his bachelor’s degree in Psychology and English Literature from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and his Ph.D. in Human Development & Family Studies from The Pennsylvania State University. Before joining Annenberg, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Complex Systems Lab of Professor Danielle Bassett in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.