Vaida D. Thompson

Ph.D., Professor, Fellow Emerita, Psychology and Neuroscience
vaida_thompson@unc.edu
Curriculum Vitae
PubMed Publications
CPC Publications

Vaida D. Thompson is a Fellow Emeritus at the Carolina Population Center.

Vaida Thompson directs the Social Psychology Program in her department. Her research interests include sexual behavior and self-esteem, consequences of family size and ordinal position including interactions between parents and teens, and attitudes as predictors of demographic and health behavior. She is addressing the social-psychological factors that contribute to protection or nonprotection from AIDS, and in homophobic and other out-group rejection processes. She has focused on black-white differences in self-esteem across young adulthood and on Iranian adolescents' attitudes toward modernity (attitudes and intentions related to education, career, marriage, fertility, and female labor-force participation). Thompson is a long-time member of the UNC-CH AIDS Task Force and on the editorial board of Advances in Population: Psychosocial Perspectives.