Ross A. Thompson is a developmental psychologist in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. His research concerns the influence of early parent-child relationships on social-emotional growth, the development of emotion regulation, and the growth of prosocial and moral motivation in the early years. He is also concerned with the applications of developmental science to public policy problems, and has written about the prevention of child maltreatment, child custody after parents divorce, early childhood mental health, early learning and school readiness, research ethics, and grandparent visitation rights.
Education and Professional Development
Thompson was born on August 5, 1954 in Madison, Wisconsin and grew up in Wisconsin and California. He earned his B.A. in Psychology from Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1976, where his initial interests in law and public policy shifted to psychology. After graduation, he went to the University of Michigan to study...
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Selected Bibliography
Thompson, R. A. (1990). Vulnerability in research: A developmental perspective on research risk. Child Development, 61, 1–16.
Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. In N. A. Fox (Ed.), The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Biological and behavioral aspects. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, 25–52 (Serial no. 240).
Thompson, R. A. (1996). Attachment and emotional development – From clinic to research to policy. In M. R. Merrens & G. G. Brannigan (Eds.), The developmental psychologists: Research across the lifespan (pp. 69–87). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Thompson, R. A. (2000). The legacy of early attachments. Child Development, 71, 145–152.
Thompson, R. A. (2011). Emotion and emotion regulation: Two sides of the developing coin. Emotion Review, 3, 53–61.
Thompson, R. A. (2012). Wither the preconventional child? Toward a life-span moral development theory. Child Development Perspectives, 6, 423–429.
Thompson, R. A. (2014). Stress and child development. The Future of Children, 24, 41–59.
Thompson, R. A. (2015). Relationships, regulation, and early development. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science (Social and emotional development, 7th Ed., Vol. 3., M. E. Lamb & C. Garcia Coll, Vol. Eds., pp. 201–246). New York: Wiley.
Thompson, R. A., Laible, D. J., & Ontai, L. L. (2003). Early understanding of emotion, morality, and the self: Developing a working model. In R. V. Kail (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 31, pp. 137–171). San Diego: Academic.
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Thompson, R. (2017). Thompson, Ross A.. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1021-1
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