Welcome to the Development of Addictive & Risky Behaviors Lab page. The lab is housed in the Department of Psychology at Colorado State University and trains graduate and undergraduate students in research and statistical methods.
Dr. Conner will be accepting a new graduate student for the Fall of 2026. Applications for the CSU Clinical Psychology PhD progam close December 1st, 2025.
Our Goals
Our lab seeks to understand predictors of engagement in a variety of health risk behaviors. Specifically, we examine personality, genetic, and mental health underpinnings of substance use and misuse, health-risk sexual behavior, and dangerous or illegal behaviors. We conduct research with clinical, community, and college samples. Our current focus is on how to assess THC exposure, identifying predictors of engagement in and outcomes of probelmatic cannabis use, predictors of engagement in cannabis use for medical and recreational reasons, harm reduction approaches to reducing opiate overdose and Hepatitis C and HIV infection, predictors of self-injury and suicide, predictors and outcomes of enagement in risky sexual behavior, how we define and understand consent among young adults, and the overarching area of improving our understanding of how society receives an individuals minoritized identities, how society responds to them, and how that precipitates engagement in health risk behaviors by those who hold minoritized identities. Our goal is to identify risk factors which may be amenable to intervention, so as to better inform clinical prevention and intervention work.
Contact Us
If you have questions or want to know more about the lab and the work of our students, feel free to contact us at brad.conner@colostate.edu.
About Dr. Conner
I conduct thematic research that focuses on the etiology and negative outcomes of sensation seeking, emotion dysregulation and impulsivity across the lifespan. More specifically, I study how certain genotypes and personality types influence the onset and course of disorders and the engagement in risky behaviors, such as drug misuse, risky sexual behavior, and delinquency in adolescence and young adulthood. I employ advanced multivariate statistical techniques to further understanding of the complex relations among genes, personality types, psychopathology, and risky behavior as causal mechanisms of negative outcomes such as substance dependence, contraction of sexually transmitted infections, injury, incarceration, and death. Ultimately, the goal of my research is to further understanding of how prevention and intervention efficacy vary as a function of the interplay of genetic, personality, and environmental factors.
I am a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program. I also serve as the Director for the Masters in Addictions Counseling (MAC) program. More information about the MAC program can be found at: https://psychology.colostate.edu/mac/