Dr. Rachel McLaren studies interpersonal communication, social cognition, and hurtful messages. Her research seeks to clarify the interplay of communication, cognition, and emotion in response to significant experiences, such as hurtful interactions, within personal relationships. She also examines how relationship and situational characteristics influence people’s ability to process relational messages.

Her recent work focuses on how relational turbulence influences a couple’s ability to coordinate relational inferences about past hurtful events. Her other interests include examining how interactions within close relationships affect people’s global conceptions of the relationship and, in turn, how those conceptions influence their experiences of particular communication events.