Marcellus Merritt
- Associate Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences
Education
PhD, Howard University, 1997
Teaching Schedule
| Course Num | Title | Meets |
|---|---|---|
| PSYCH 205-001 | Personality | TR 8:30am-9:45am |
| PSYCH 930-001 | Seminar in Social Psychology | M 2pm-4:40pm |
Courses Taught
- Psych 325 - Research Methods in Psychology
- Psych 578 - Race, Ethnicity, and Health
- Psych 930 - Seminar in Social Psychology
Teaching Interests
Dr. Merritt teaches undergraduate research methods and personality, the psychology of race, ethnicity and health and a graduate seminar in social psychology. Dr. Merritt will recruit a new graduate student for Fall 2025 admission to the Health Masters program.
Research Interests
Dr. Merritt's research program on stress and cardiovascular health disparities is comprised of two corresponding lines of work:
- Analysis of underlying social psychological and physiological stress mechanisms for excess rates of cardiovascular disease risk among diverse populations
- Analysis of health protective behaviors that are linked with reduced risk for adverse health outcomes
For instance, his innovative research findings show how the John Henryism active coping (JHAC) hypothesis or how sustained effortful coping responses to everyday psychosocial demands is linked with:
- Poor daily cortisol responses among dementia family caregivers with more challenging care recipients
- Prolonged vascular recovery to anger recall stress among young adults from more socioeconomically disadvantaged family backgrounds.
His research focuses on how these psychosocial mechanisms work in settings, such as community health care centers, primary medical care settings, and biomedical laboratory contexts.
Currently, he is examining how tailored relaxation interventions enhance cardiovascular and neuroendocrine recovery to mental stress and nighttime dipping blood pressure and heart rate among young adults with a history of cardiovascular disease. He and his colleagues believe that providing proper coping skills training and improving cardiovascular recovery to psychosocial stress will reduce future risk for chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes among diverse populations. Their ultimate goal is to leverage this ideographically tailored part in an effort to promote better adoption and long-term adherence to relevant interventions. Along these lines, he is a consultant on a lifestyle modification intervention tailored to African American hypertensive patients in Milwaukee, WI.
In addition, he is collaborating with colleagues in the department of neurology at the Medical College of Wisconsin a series of innovative projects focused on heart rate variability as an indicator of the efficacy of behavioral and pharmacologic interventions in patients with autonomic disorders and chronic pain. These studies have two goals, to determine if better control of heart rate predicts cognitive and emotional flexibility and better treatment response, and to use various imaging techniques like fMRI to understand the links between pain modulation and autonomic control.