Lauren E. Kuykendall

Lauren E. Kuykendall

Lauren E. Kuykendall

Associate Professor

Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Worker well-being; worker health; work-life issues; leisure; emotions; positive worker characteristics; work stress and stress management; gender and well-being.

Dr. Lauren Kuykendall is an Associate Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology. She joined Mason after receiving her Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Purdue University in 2015. Her research focuses on employee well-being, burnout, and work-nonwork balance. Current research projects in her lab focus on:

  1. Work-rest rhythms and recovery from work stress, with an emphasis on understanding how organizational and interpersonal factors impact psychological detachment from work and burnout
  2. Flexible work arrangements and paid leave policies (e.g., parental leave, vacation), with an emphasis on understanding barriers to and consequences of policy utilization
  3. Work-nonwork decision-making, time allocation, and well-being, with an emphasis on understanding how nonwork roles and activities that are more voluntary in nature (e.g., friendships, leisure activities) impact well-being
  4. Ideal worker norms, with an emphasis on understanding the individual and societal costs of long work hours and continuous availability for work, the factors that perpetuate ideal worker norms, and whether (and how) ideal worker norms are shifting (or could shift)
  5. Meaningful work, with an emphasis on understanding how organizational attempts to manage perceptions of meaning impact burnout and well-being

She serves as a Senior Scholar at Mason’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being and as Chair of the Students and Academia subcommittee (Visibility committee) of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). She also serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Business and Psychology where she was named a Reviewer of the Year in 2019.

Dr. Kuykendall teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the Psychology Department. She received the 2021 University Teaching Excellence Award with special recognition for High Impact Teaching.

Selected Publications

Kuykendall, L., Tay, L., & Ng, V. (2015). Leisure engagement and subjective well-being: A meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin, 141, 364-403.

Tay, L., Ng, V., Kuykendall, L., Diener, E. (2014). Demographics and worker well-being: An empirical review using representative data from the United States and across the world. In P. L. Perrewé, J. Halbesleben, & C. C. Rosen (Eds.), Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being Volume 12, 235-283.

Tay, L, & Kuykendall, L. (2013). Promoting happiness: Malleability of individual and societal-level happiness. International Journal of Psychology, 48, 159-176.

Dissertations Supervised

Melissa Hickin (Stiksma), Understanding the Antecedents of Supervisor Support for Recovery (2022)

Carol M. Wong, When Job Demands Undermine Recovery Experiences: Unpacking the Recovery Paradox (2022)

Lydia Craig, Understanding Men’s Utilization of Paid Parental Leave: A Competing Identities Perspective (2021)

Ze Zhu, Clarifying the Construct of Supervisor Support for Recovery and its Impacts on Employee Recovery Experiences (2021)

Ho Kwan Cheung, What She Expects When Expecting: Effects of Pregnancy Disclosure on Women's Meta-perecptions and Perceived Leader-member Exchange (2018)