Kenneth Sher, PhD

Kenneth J. Sher, Ph.D., is a nationally renowned scholar, researcher, and mentor whose work has greatly advanced our understanding of the etiology and course of alcohol use disorder (AUD), particularly as it relates to personality traits and their evolution. Dr. Sher has been at the forefront of research on personality, alcohol misuse among college students, and the behavioral pharmacology of alcohol. He is also a highly regarded expert in longitudinal research methodology. Over the course of his career, Dr. Sher has studied a wide range of topics contributing substantially to our understanding of the development of alcohol and other substance misuse. He has examined risk mechanisms that influence AUD onset and progression, premorbid predictors of future AUD (e.g., cognitive mechanisms and individual differences in the psychopharmacological responses to alcohol), and the involvement of family history of alcoholism in multiple etiological pathways to AUDs. 

His diverse research interests include: personality, as well as developmental changes in personality, as predictors of alcohol misuse and AUD; gene-environment interactions in the development of AUD; and predictors and consequences of binge drinking and alcohol misuse among college students (including 21st birthday drinking and other extreme drinking occasions). Dr. Sher has also investigated the phenomenon of “maturing out” of alcohol problems, demonstrating that maturing out is associated with differences in age-related personality changes that are accompanied by decreased impulsivity and neuroticism and is not merely a consequence of constrained opportunity occasioned by the assumption of adult roles. 

Dr. Sher had led two major ongoing longitudinal cohort studies that have followed individuals beginning in their freshman year of college and into mid-life. In addition to the development of AUD, this research tracks drug use and comorbid psychiatric disorders. A particularly innovative aspect of this work is the incorporation of genotyping which may provide key information on individual differences in susceptibility to AUD. 

In addition to using traditional survey approaches, Dr. Sher’s research employs event-based data to capture the momentary moods, motivational states, and cues that precede drinking events. This work is critical to understanding transient influences on drinking behavior and related consequences on a given occasion. 

A major focus of his current work is the critical evaluation of existing diagnostic approaches and development of empirically-based criteria and algorithms for AUD diagnosis. This research holds promise for improving AUD diagnosis in clinical practice, and advancing research on the causes and correlates of AUD.

Dr. Sher has been continually funded by NIAAA for more than 30 years. He has had more than 250 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and he has authored and edited several books. 

Dr. Sher earned his undergraduate degree from Antioch College, his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Indiana University, and completed clinical internship training at Brown University. He is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, where he directs a pre and postdoctoral training program in alcohol research.