He received his Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from the University at Albany, State University of New York, and completed postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Psychology at New York University and in the Addiction Research Center at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Research Society on Alcoholism. His research focuses on 1) the marital and family context of substance use and substance use disorders; 2) mechanisms of behavior change in substance use disorders; and 3) application of intensive longitudinal methods to studies of stress, social interaction, and substance use.