Darwin Guevarra

Education

• Ph.D. Social Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2019
• M.S. Social Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2015
• B.A. Psychology, San Francisco State University, 2013

Teaching Interests

• PSY 420 | Seminar in Social Psychology (Topic: Affect Regulation)
• Psy 630 | Seminar in Social Psychology (Topic: Well-Being and Health)

Research Interests

Guevarra’s research aims to understand affective processes (e.g., emotions, stress, pain, mood, impulses), ways to regulate them, and their impact on psychological and physical health.

He is presently interested in identifying, developing, testing, and understanding low-effort and easy-to-use affect regulation strategies

Dr. Guevarra can be a primary advisor in the Social Psychology Ph.D. program or co-advise students in both the Social Psychology and Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs at Miami University. Please see website for more information on what Dr. Guevarra looks for in graduate student applicants.

Publications

• Guevarra, D. A., Park, Y., Xu, X. O., Liou, J., Smith, J., Callahan, P., Simon-Thomas, E., & Epel, E. S. (2025). Scaling a brief digital well-being intervention (the Big Joy Project) and sociodemographic moderators: Single-group pre-post study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27, e72053.
• Sgambati, T. J., Colloca, L., Geers, A. L., & Guevarra, D. A. (2025). Negative lay perceptions of open-label placebo users may pose barriers to intervention adoption. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 59(1), kaaf011.
• Goel, H., Park, Y., Liou, J., Guevarra, D. A., Callahan, P., Smith, J., Yao, B., Wang, D., Liu, X., McDuff, D., Elhadad, N. Simon-Thomas, E., Epel, E.S., & Xu, X. (2025). Promoting prosociality via micro-acts of joy: A large-scale well-being intervention study. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-28).
• Park, Y., Guevarra, D. A., Simon-Thomas, E., & Epel, E. E. (2025). Who engages in well-being interventions? An analysis of a global digital intervention study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 20(4), 699–712.
• Guevarra, D. A., Webster, C., Moros, J. N., Kross., E, & Moser, J. S. (2024). Remotely administered non-deceptive placebos reduce COVID-related stress, anxiety, and depression. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 16(4), 2204-2224.
• Guevarra, D. A., Dutcher, E., Crum, A. J., Prather, A., & Epel, E. (2024). Examining the association of vaccine-related mindsets and post-vaccination antibody response, side effects, and affective outcomes. Brain, Behavior, & Immunity-Health, 100818.
• Guevarra, D. A., Kross, E., & Moser, J. S. (2024). Harnessing placebo effects to regulate emotions. In J. J. Gross & B. Q. Ford (Eds.), Handbook of emotion regulation (3rd ed., pp. 112-118). The Guilford Press.
• Guevarra, D. A., Louis, C. C., Gloe, L. M., Russman Block, S., Kashy, D., Klump, K. L., & Moser, J. S. (2023). Examining a window of vulnerability for affective symptoms in the mid-luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 147, 105958.
• Geers, A. L., Faasse, K., Guevarra, D. A., Clemens, K. S., Helfer, S. G., & Colagiuri, B. (2021). Affect and emotions in placebo and nocebo effects: What do we know so far? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, e12575.
• Guevarra, D. A., Moser, J. S., Wager, T. D., & Kross, E. (2020). Placebos without deception reduce self-report and neural measures of emotional distress. Nature Communications, 11(1), 3785