Professor Smith's research centers on the relationships among cognition, emotion, and adaptation, broadly defined. Topics investigated include the role of cognitive appraisal in the differentiation of emotion, the psychophysiology of appraisal and emotion, the cognitive processes underlying appraisal, and the role of emotion and coping in long-term adaptation in stress. Current laboratory efforts focus on the psychophysiological differentiation of emotional experience and the cognitive processes underlying emotion elicitation and differentionation, including the differentiation of positive emotions, whereas more applied collaborative efforts are examining the roles of emotion and coping in long-term adaptation to chronic health conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and children's recurrent abdominal pain.