Dr. Ryan Andrew Brown Assistant Professor, Human Development and Social Policy

An anthropologist with training in public health and psychology, Ryan Brown is interested in how social and cultural dynamics influence variability in health and well-being. His research simultaneously takes evolutionary, biological, psychological, and cultural perspectives into account. This approach to research assumes fundamental human universals and explores plasticity in these biological and behavioral universals through cross-cultural comparison. Brown is particularly interested in using cross-cultural comparison to investigate the determinants and consequences of violent and risk-taking behaviors. He uses field ethnography, laboratory psychophysiology, behavioral coding, and structured survey and psychological interviews to investigate the intersections of culture and health. In collaboration with the Institute for Policy Research, he is establishing a mobile culture, behavior and psychophysiology laboratory.

Brown received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 1998 and a National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award in 2002. He was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar in 2006. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, the International Association for Cross Cultural Psychology, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Society for Psychological Anthropology.

View Ryan Brown's CV.

Year		Degree		Institution
2008		Postdoctoral Fellowship, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Health and Society Scholars Program		University of California – San Francisco / Berkeley
2006		PhD, Anthropology		Emory University
2002		MA		Emory University
1998		BS, Anthropology		University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Year	Title
2006	Getting a life in rural America: Life course models, derailment, and resilience among Cherokee and Anglo emerging adults

Brown RA, Adler NE, Worthman CM, Copeland WE, Costello EJ, Angold A (2008). Cultural and community determinants of subjective social status among Cherokee and White youth. Ethnicity and Health: 13(4):289-303.

Weden M, Brown RA (2008). Historical and life course timing of the male mortality disadvantage in Europe: Epidemiological transitions, evolution, and behavior. Social Biology: Biannual Journal of the Study of Social Biology: 53(1-2).

Worthman CM, Brown RA (2006). Companionable sleep: Social regulation of sleep and co-sleeping in Egyptian families. Journal of Family Psychology: 21(1):124-135.

Brown RA, Worthman CM, Costello EJ, Erkanli A (2006). The life trajectory interview for youth (LTI-Y): Method development and psychometrics of an instrument to assess life course models and achievement. International Journal for Methods in Psychiatric Research: 15(4):192-206.

Worthman CM, Brown RA (2005). A biocultural life history approach to the developmental psychobiology of male aggression in DM Stoff, EJ Susman (Eds), Developmental Psychobiology of Aggression: 187-222.

Brown RA, Kemeny ME (November, 2008). The brain in culture: emotional responses to social threat. . Invited paper in “The Encultured Brain” at the American Anthropological Association.  Organizers: Daniel Lende, Greg Downy. San Francisco, CA.

Brown RA. (November, 2008). Anthropologies of Population. Invited Discussant for this topic at American Anthropological Association. Organizers: Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, Webb Sprague. San Francisco, CA.

Brown RA, Halpern-Felsher B. (July, 2008). Cultural variation in risk-taking and self-other constructions: The role of risk perception.. Invited paper in “Personal and Collective Dimensions of the Self: Ethnic, Cultural and National Divergence” at the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development. Würzburg, Germany.

Brown RA, Rehkopf D, Costello, EJ, Worthman CM (July, 2008). Cultural differences in life course models: An example from American Indian and white U.S. youth. Cultural differences in life course models: An example from American Indian and white U.S. youth. Bremen, Germany.

Brown RA, Kemeny ME. (May, 2008). Anger and shame in social context: Health consequences of social threat. Invited poster at the Robert Wood Johnson Society Health and Society Scholars Program. San Antonio, TX.

Brown, RA. (April, 2008). Transformation of an anthropologist: Retrospective, preliminary data, and future directions.. Invited talk at UC-San Francisco for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. San Francisco, CA.

Current Research
Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS). Since 2000, Brown has been involved with this large-scale longitudinal study of families and health in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, which includes the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian (EBCI). In 2002, Brown received funding from the W.T. Grant Foundation to conduct field research with the GSMS population. From 2002 to 2005, Brown lived and worked in the field, using structured ethnographic methods to develop the Life Trajectory Interview for Youth (LTI-Y), a card sort method for assessing the life course goals and perspectives of emerging adults. The LTI-Y has received international attention, and Brown is consulting with a team of researchers at Frei Universität in Berlin who will use a modified version of the LTI-Y with a Turkish-German population in the Possible Selves Study, directed by Julia Eksner.

Emotional Reactions to Social Threat. Collaborating with Margaret Kemeny at UC-San Francisco, Brown has focused on emotional reactions (particularly anger and shame) to social threat in everyday life. This work explores how culture and socialization determines emotional responses to social situations, and how variation in emotional responding leads to differential health consequences. At Northwestern, he is establishing a mobile psychophysiology laboratory with the capacity to simultaneously record emotional, biological and behavioral responses to social stimuli in home settings, for use in large-scale longitudinal studies.

Acculturation and Risk-Taking. First-generation Latino and Asian immigrants often show lower than expected engagement in health risk behaviors, but this “protective” effect either disappears (or even reverses) with increased acculturation. Collaborating with Bonnie Halpern-Felsher at UC-San Francisco, Brown is exploring the cultural and emotional mediators of the “acculturation gradient” in risk-taking. This research uses two longitudinal studies of risk perception and risky behavior in California schools, as well as a nationally representative internet-based study conducted by Anderson Analytics. Current analyses show that the perceived chance of shaming or disappointing family or community members is strongly associated with less sexual risk-taking.

Pathways to Human Trafficking. In 2008, Brown began collaborating with Lisa Rende Taylor and Matt Friedman at the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP), headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, with field offices throughout the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Brown’s collaboration with UNIAP takes a theoretically informed, evidence-based approach to understanding and intervening on life course pathways associating with human trafficking. This involves understanding the motivations and social systems of victims, clients, brokers and traffickers. Relevant fields include anthropology, psychology, sociology, epidemiology, economics and law. There are opportunities for graduate students to engage in a field experience with UNIAP in the summer of 2009, and future plans include creating a summer field school.

Social Change and Mortality. Collaborating with economists, demographers and other population scientists, Brown is exploring cases of political, economic, and technological change that have led to dramatic changes in the human lifespan; such cases often involve significant gender disparities or are gender-specific. This work spans multiple countries, including Western Europe and (most recently) Nepal, and points to specific kinds of social dynamics (i.e., changes in the nature of social hierarchy, political mobilization, technological change) with large-scale cumulative impact on the human lifespan. Key collaborators include Maggie Weden at RAND, Ray Catalano at UC-Berkeley, and Jenna Nobles (UC-San Francisco & Berkeley).

Year		Title		Source		Period		Amount		Status
2007		Race-ethnicity, acculturation, and disparities in risk-taking behavior: the role of enculturated worldview, acculturative stress, family processes, and social norms		Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: UCSF Health Disparities Working Group		2007 - 2008		$27,868		Funded
PI: Brown, Ryan    Bonnie Halpern-Felsher (UC-San Francisco)
2007		Anger in social context: implications for physical disease and psychobehavioral risk		Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: UC-Berkeley Population Health and Human Development Working Group		2007 - 2008		$10,000		Funded
PI: Brown, Ryan    Margaret Kemeny (UC-San Francisco)
2002		Adolescence to adulthood: Resilience to poverty in American Indian and Anglo youth in rural America		William T. Grant Foundation		2002 - 2005		$555,434		Funded
PI: Brown, Ryan    Carol M. Worthman (Emory), E. Jane Costello (Duke), Alaattin Erkanli (Duke)

Violence, risk-taking, psychophysiology, emotions and health, culture and acculturation, evolutionary and biological approaches to health and behavior  

 

SESP 372

Methods of Observing Human Behavior Guided practice in systematic and participant observation of human behavior.  Observer bias, field notes, unobtrusive measures.