Photo of Dr. Sher
Chancellor's Professor and Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus
sherk@missouri.edu
Emeritus
Lab Information
Education

B.A. Psychology, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH 1975

Ph.D. Psychology (clinical), Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 1981

Predoctoral Internship, Brown University, Providence, RI 1981

Research Interests
  • etiology of alcohol dependence
  • psychopharmacology of alcohol
  • prospective research
  • nosology and diagnosis
  • psychiatric comorbidity
  • personality and psychopathology
Bio

PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS

RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Mardi J. Horowitz, M. D. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco.
January 1973 -June 1973; October 1974 -August 1976.

TEACHING ASSISTANT
Department of Psychology, Indiana University.  May 1978 - July 1978.

ASSOCIATE INSTRUCTOR
Department of Psychology, Indiana University. May 1978 - December 1978

RESEARCH TRAINEE
Predoctoral research traineeship sponsored by the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. Indiana University. August 1978 -May 1980.

PSYCHOLOGY INTERN
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI. July 1980 - June 1981.

ASSISTANT TO FULL PROFESSOR
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia.September 1981 – August 2000.

VISITING ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Department of Psychology, University of Washington. January 1989 - June 1989.

ASSOCIATE CHAIR (Research Enhancement)
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia. August 1993 – 2019

FREDERICK A. MIDDLEBUSH PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia.  September 1997 - August 2000

CURATORS' DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR
Department of Psychological Science, University of Missouri-Columbia   September 2000 – February 2022


CURATORS’ DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES EMERITUS
University of Missouri-Columbia  March 2022-present.

CHANCELLOR’S PROFESSOR
University of Missouri-Columbia  March 2022-present.

DIRECTOR OF PREDOCTORAL AND POSTDOCTORAL TRAINING IN ALCOHOL STUDIES
Department of Psychological Science, University of Missouri-Columbia      July 2002 - June 2022

DIRECTOR, ALCOHOL RESEARCH TRAINING SUMMER SCHOOL (ARTSS)
University of Missouri-Columbia and Washington University School of Medicine     May 2010- May 2021

AWARDS

New Investigator Research Award, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (1983)
Young Investigator Award, Research Society on Alcoholism (1988)
Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Faculty Research and Creative Activity in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia (1992)
Fellow, American Psychological Association
Division 12: Clinical (1997), Division 28: Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse (1998), Division 50: Addictions (1998), Division 1: General Psychology (2003)
Fellow, American Psychological Society (1998)
Frederick A. Middlebush Professor of Psychology, University of Missouri (1997-2000)
MERIT Award, National Institutes of Health (2002-2008)
Curators' Professor of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri (2000-present)
Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, Division 50 (Addictions), American Psychological Association (2007)
Senior Scientist Research and Mentorship Award (K05), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIH) (2007-2012; 2012-2017)
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007)
Distinguished Researcher Award, Research Society on Alcoholism (2008)
Tharp Award, Tharp Estate (2008)
President’s Award for Research and Creativity, University of Missouri System (2008)
Presidential Citation, American Psychological Association (2009)
Gold Chalk Award, Graduate and Professional Student Council, University of Missouri (2010)
G. Alan Marlatt Mentorship Award, Research Society on Alcoholism (2012)
APF Spielberger EMPathy Lecturer, American Psychological Foundation (2013)
John G. Skelton Lecturer in Health Psychology, Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX (2015)
Richard C. Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University (2015)
Robert Cairns Capstone Lecturer, Center for Developmental Science, Chapel Hill, NC (2017)
22nd Annual Mark Keller Lecture, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD (2017)
Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training, Society of Addiction Psychology, American Psychological Association (Division 50) (2019)
Frank Seixas Service Award, Research Society on Alcoholism (2020)
SEC Faculty Achievement Award/SEC Professor of the Year (Missouri) (2021)
E. M. Jellinek Memorial Award (2022)

Selected Publications

Selected Publications (in chronological order)
-- for a more complete listing see: 
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=O51bc7QAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Sher, K. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1982). Risk for alcoholism and individual differences in the stress response dampening effect of alcohol. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 91, 350-367.

Sher, K. J. (1985). Subjective effects of alcohol: Influence of setting and individual differences in alcohol expectancies. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 46, 137-146.

Sher, K. J., & Walitzer, K. S. (1986). Individual differences in the stress-response-dampening effect of alcohol:  A dose response study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 159-167.

Sher, K. J. (1987). Stress response dampening. In H. T. Blane and K. Leonard (Eds.), Psychological theories of drinking and alcoholism (pp. 227-271). New York: Guilford.

Kushner, M. G., Sher, K. J., & Beitman, B. D. (1990). The relation between alcohol problems and the anxiety disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 685-695.

Sher, K. J. (1991). Children of alcoholics: A critical appraisal of theory and research. A volume in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Mental Health and Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (236 pages)

Sher, K. J., Walitzer, K. S., Wood, P. K., & Brent, E. E. (1991). Characteristics of children of alcoholics: Putative risk factors, substance use and abuse, and psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100, 427-448.

Sher, K. J., & Trull, T. (1994). Personality and disinhibitory psychopathology: Alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology103, 92-102.

Sher, K. J., & Trull, T. J. (1996). Methodological issues in psychopathology research. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 371-400.

Kushner, M. G., Sher, K. J., & Erickson, D. (1999). Prospective analysis of the relation between DSM-III anxiety disorders and alcohol use disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 723-732.

Sher, K. J., & Gotham, H. (1999). Pathological alcohol involvement: A developmental disorder of young adulthood. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 933-956.

Sher, K. J., Trull, T. J., Bartholow, B., & Vieth, A. (1999). Personality and alcoholism: Issues, methods, and etiological processes. In H. Blane and K. Leonard (Eds.), Psychological theories of drinking and alcoholism (2nd edition), pp. 55-105. New York: Plenum.

Sher, K. J., Bartholow, B. D., & Wood, M. D. (2000). Personality and substance use disorders: A prospective study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68, 818-829.

Jackson, K. M., & Sher, K. J. (2003). Alcohol use disorders and psychological distress: A prospective state-trait analysis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 112, 599–613.

Sher, K. J., Gotham, H. J., & Watson, A. L. (2004). Trajectories of dynamic predictors of disorder: Their meanings and implications. Development and Psychopathology, 16, 825-856.

Sher, K. J., Grekin, E., & Williams, N. (2005). The development of alcohol use disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 493-523.

Jackson, K. M., & Sher, K. J. (2008). Comparison of longitudinal phenotypes based on alternate heavy drinking cut scores: A systematic Comparison of trajectory approaches III. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. 22, 198-209.

Rutledge, P., Park, A., & Sher, K. J. (2008). 21st birthday drinking: Extremely extreme Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 511-516.

Littlefield, A., Sher, K. J., & Wood, P. K. (2009). Is 'maturing out' of problematic alcohol involvement related to personality change? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 360–374.

Park, A., Sher, K. J., & Krull, J. (2009). Selection and socialization of risky drinking during the college transition: The importance of micro-environments associated with specific living units. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 23, 404-414.

Park, A., Sher, K. J., Wood, P. K., & Krull, J. L. (2009). Dual mechanisms underlying accentuation of risky drinking via fraternity/sorority affiliation: The role of personality, peer norms, and alcohol availability. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 241-255.

Dick, D. M., Smith, G., Olausson, P., Mitchell, S. H., Leeman, R. F., O’Malley, S. S., & Sher, K. (2010). Understanding the construct of impulsivity and its relationship to alcohol use disorders. Addiction Biology, 15, 217-226.

Vergés, A., Jackson, K. M., Bucholz, K. K., Grant, J. D., Trull, T. J., Wood, P. K., & Sher, K. J. (2012). Deconstructing the age-prevalence curve of alcohol dependence: Why 'maturing out' is only a small piece of the puzzle. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121, 511-523.

Winograd, R., Littlefield, A. K., Martinez, J. A., & Sher, K. J. (2012). The drunken self: The five-factor model as an organizational framework for characterizing perceptions of one’s own drunkenness. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 36, 1787-1793.

Haeny, A. M., Littlefield, A. K., & Sher, K. J. (2014). False negatives in the assessment of lifetime alcohol use disorders: A serious but unappreciated problem. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 75, 530-535

Verges, A., Jackson, K. M., Bucholz, K. K., Trull, T. J., Lane, S. P., & Sher, K. J. (2014). Personality disorders and the persistence of substance use disorders: A reanalysis of published NESARC findings. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 123, 809-820.

Dick, D. M., Agrawal, A., Keller, M. C., Adkins, A., Aliev, F., Monroe, S., Hewitt, J. K., Kendler, K. S., & Sher, K. J. (2015). Candidate gene-environment interaction research: Reflections and recommendations. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 10, 37-59.

Fleming, K. A., Bartholow, B. D., Hilgard, J., McCarthy, D. M., O'Neill, S. E., Steinley, D., & Sher, K. J. (2016). The Alcohol Sensitivity Questionnaire: Evidence for construct validity. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research40, 880-888.

Lane, S. P., Steinley, D., & Sher, K. J. (2016). Meta-analysis of DSM AUD criteria severities: Structural consistency is only "skin deep." Psychological Medicine, 46, 1769-1784.

Steinley, D., Lane, S. P., Sher, K. J. (2016). Determining optimal diagnostic criteria through chronicity and comorbidity. In Silico Pharmacology, Dec 4, 1-12.

Sher, K. J. (2016) (Ed.). Handbook of Substance Use and Substance Use Disorders, Volume 1. (690 pages) and Volume 2 (766 pages).  New York: Oxford University Press.

Korucuoglu, O., Sher, K. J., Wood, P. K., Saults, J. S., Altamirano, L., Miyake, A., & Bartholow, B. D. (2017). Acute alcohol effects on set-shifting and its moderation by baseline individual differences: A latent variable analysis. Addiction, 112, 442-453.

Winograd, R., Steinley, D., Lane, S. P., & Sher, K. J. (2017). An experimental investigation of drunk personality using self and observer reports. Clinical Psychological Science, 5, 439-456.

Barch, D. M., Albaugh, M. D., Avenevoli, S., Chang, L., Clark, D. B., Glantz, M. D.,…Sher, K. J. (2018). Demographic, physical and mental health assessments in the adolescent brain and cognitive development study: Rationale and description. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 55-66.

Lee, M. R., Boness, C. L., McDowell, Y. E., Vergés, A., Steinley, D. L., & Sher, K. J. (2018). Desistance and severity of Alcohol Use Disorder: A lifespan-developmental investigation. Clinical Psychological Science, 6, 90-105.

Bickel, W., Crabbe, J. C., & Sher, K. J. (2019). “What is addiction? How can animal and human research be used to advance research, diagnosis, and treatment of alcohol and other substance use disorders? Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 43, 6-21.

Boness, C. L., Lane, S., & Sher, K. J. (2019). Not all Alcohol Use Disorder criteria are equally severe: Towards severity grading of individual criteria in college drinkers Psychology of Addictive Behavior, 33, 35-49.

Boness, C. L., Stevens, J. E., Steinley, D., Trull, T. J., & Sher, K. J. (2019). Deriving alternative criteria sets for Alcohol Use Disorders using statistical optimization. Results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology, 27, 283-296. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pha0000249

McDowell, Y., Vergés A., & Sher, K. J. (2019). Are some AUD Criteria more (or less) externalizing than others? Distinguishing alcohol use symptomatology from general externalizing psychopathology. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 43. 483-496.

Boness, C. L., Loeffelman, J. E., Steinley, D., Trull, T., & Sher, K. J. (2020). Using complete enumeration to derive “One-Size Fits-All” versus “Subgroup-Specific” diagnostic rules for substance use disorder. Assessment, 27(6), 156-162.

Orehek, E., Human, L., Sayette, M. A., Dimoff, J., Winograd, R. G., & Sher, K. J. (2020). Self-expression while drinking alcohol: Alcohol influences personality expression during first impressions Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin46,109-123. doi: 10.1177/0146167219843933.

Boness, C. S., Watts., A. L., Moeller, K. N., & Sher, K. J., (2021). The Etiologic, Theory-Based, Ontogenetic Hierarchical Framework of Alcohol Use Disorder: A Translational Systematic Review of Reviews. Psychological Bulletin, 147(10), 1075–1123. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000333

Cofresí, R. U., Watts,, A., L., Martins, J. S., Wood, P. K., Sher, K. J., Cowan, N., Miyake, A., Bartholow, B. D. (2021).  Acute effect of alcohol on working memory updating.  Addiction116(11), 3029-3043.

Helle, A. C., Sher, K. J., & Trull, T. J. (2021). Individual symptoms or categorical diagnoses? An epidemiological examination of the association between alcohol use, personality disorders, and psychological symptoms. . Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 12(5), 484–490. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000459

Littlefield, A.K., Lane, S.P., Gette, J.A., Watts, A.L., & Sher, K.J. (2021). The “Big Everything”: Integrating and Investigating Dimensional Models of Psychopathology, Personality, Personality Pathology, and Cognitive Functioning. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 12(2), 103-114.

Loeffelman, J. E., Steinley, D., Boness, C. L., Trull, T. J., Wood, P. K., Brusco, M. J., & Sher, K. J. (2021). Combinatorial Optimization of Clustering Decisions: An Approach to Refine Psychiatric Diagnoses. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 56(1), 57-69.

Prince, E. J., Siegel, D. J., Carroll, C. P., Sher, K. J., & Bienvenu, O. J. (2021). A longitudinal study of personality traits, anxiety, and depressive disorders in young adults. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping34(3), 299-307.

Vergés, A., Lee, M. R., Martin, C. S., Trull, T. J., Martens, M. P., Wood, P. K.., & Sher, K. J. (2021). Not all symptoms of alcohol dependence are developmentally equivalent: Implications for the false positives problem. Psychology of Addictive Behavior, 35, 444-457.

Waddell, J., Sher, K. J., & Piasecki, T. (2021). Coping motives and negative affect: An ecological study of the antecedents of alcohol craving and alcohol use. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 35, 565-576.

Watts, A. L., Wood, P. K., Jackson, K. M., Lisdahl, K. M., Heitzeg, M. M., Gonzalez, R., Tapert, S. F., Barch, D. M., & Sher, K.J. (2021). Incipient alcohol use in childhood: Early alcohol sipping and its relations with psychopathology and personality. Development and Psychopathology, 33 (4), (2021) 1338-1350.

Conlin, W. E., Hoffman, M., Steinley, D., & Sher, K. J. (in press). Cross-sectional and longitudinal AUD symptom networks: They tell different stories. Addictive Behaviors.

Helle, A.C., Sher, K. J., Masters, J., Washington, K., & Hawley, K.M. (in press). A mixed-method evaluation of the adoption and implementation of the College Alcohol Intervention Matrix among prevention experts: A study protocol. Implementation Science Communications.

Watts, A.L., Makol, B.A., Palumbo, I.M., De Los Reyes, A., Olino, T.M., Latzman, R.D., DeYoung, C.G., Wood, P.K., & Sher, K.J. (in press). How robust is the p-factor? Using multitrait-multimethod modeling to inform the meaning of general factors of psychopathology in youth. Clinical Psychological Science

Watts, A.L., Megahan, J.F., Conlin, W., Doss, M., & Sher, K.J. (in press).  Sociodemographic differences in youth alcohol sipping’s nomological network. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. [PREPRINT] [OSF]