Rate My Professor Darwin Guevarra

Darwin Guevarra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Miami University, where he joined in 2024 and directs the Affective Science and Psychophysiology Lab. He also serves as a Faculty Associate at the Doris Bergen Center for Human Development, Learning, and Technology. Guevarra earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2019 under advisor Ethan Kross, an M.S. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2015, and a B.A. in Psychology from San Francisco State University in 2013. His postdoctoral training includes a Scholar position in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco from 2021 to 2024 under advisors Wendy Berry Mendes and Elissa S. Epel, and a Fellowship in the Clinical Science Area of the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University from 2019 to 2021 under advisor Jason S. Moser.

Guevarra's research examines affective processes including emotions, stress, pain, mood, and impulses, strategies to regulate them such as non-deceptive placebos, and their effects on psychological and physical health. He identifies, develops, and tests low-effort affect regulation interventions. His scholarship has been published in high-impact outlets, including "Placebos without deception reduce self-report and neural measures of emotional distress" (Nature Communications, 2020), "Remotely administered non-deceptive placebos reduce COVID-related stress, anxiety, and depression" (Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 2024), "Harnessing placebo effects to regulate emotions" in the Handbook of Emotion Regulation (3rd ed., 2024), "Scaling a brief digital well-being intervention (the Big Joy Project)" (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2025), and "Examining a window of vulnerability for affective symptoms in the mid-luteal phase of the menstrual cycle" (Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2023). With over 900 citations on Google Scholar, his work advances understanding of psychophysiology and well-being. Guevarra has received the NIH Diversity Supplement Award (2023), Outstanding Flash Talk Award at the Society of Personality and Social Psychology Health Pre-Conference (2023), NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention (2014), and Horace H. Rackham Merit Fellowship (2013-2018). He holds editorial roles as Fellow for Current Directions in Psychological Science and Early Career Editorial Board Member for Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine, and serves on committees for the Society for Affective Science and Stress Measurement Network.