Amanda Bernal

Graduate Student, Social and Personality Psychology

Faculty Advisor: Matthias Mehl

Pronouns:

She, Her, Hers

Research Interests:

I am broadly interested in measuring and understanding social connection and its links to health and well-being. That is:

How can we gain a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ social experiences? For instance, how is objective social isolation distinct from loneliness and solitude? How is loneliness shaped and experienced despite fulfilling social relationships and/or beyond human relationships?
How can ambulatory assessment methods (e.g., passive sensing, naturalistic behavioral observation, and EMA/ESM) help us capture the dynamics and contexts behind social experiences as they occur in daily life? How might these methods differ and/or converge in the aspects of social connection they capture?

Selected Publications:

Jonkoski, D. S., Lorig, N., Delzio, M. C., Klensin, A., Marsters, A., Li, H., Bernal, A. M., Mehl, M. R., Rodriguez, K. E., & Bray, E. E. (2026). Cross-species conversations: The development of the AURAL-Pet coding system to capture how people talk to pets in daily life. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 17, 1881870. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1881870
Dhand, A., Tate, S., Mack, C., Carozza, S., Farynyk, D., Mehdi, B., Adeboye, O., Cooke, G., Berglund, O., Dahima, R., Luo, M., Dhongade, V., White, K., Bernal, A. M., Zafonte, R., Narayanan, S., Lee, M., Mehl, M. R., & Shin, M. (2026). Validation of SocialBit as a smartwatch algorithm for social interaction detection in a clinical population. Scientific Reports, 16(1), 4529. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-37746-x
Van Cappellen, P., Bernal, A. M., & Algoe, S. B. (2025). Using everyday prayer to test functions of gratitude in the context of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251394647

Master's Project:

A Comprehensive Psychometric Validation of a Deep Learning-Based Foreground Speech Detection Algorithm for Everyday Conversation Detection from Ambient Audio (2025)

Courses Taught:

Grader for:

TA for:

*Year listed indicates when this individual last worked in the specified course.

Awards and Recognitions:

Galileo Circle Scholar (2026)
Social & Personality Program Graduate Awards (2026)
Dr. Elizabeth L. Glisky Endowed Fellowship recipient (2025)
Psychology Master's Research Forum presentation winner (2025)
Psychology Graduate Student Data Blitz presentation winner: 1st- and 2nd-Year category (2023)

Updated: 09/16/26

Degrees