Shelley Taylor is professor of psychology at UCLA and a leading researcher on stress, coping, and disease processes. Taylor’s early research in health psychology focused on psychosocial issues surrounding cancer and its treatment. From this work, she developed cognitive adaptation theory, which maintains that people actively strive to achieve a positive sense of the self, the world, and the future following an intense personal threat, through the processes of finding meaning, regaining a sense of personal control, and engaging in motivated social comparisons with others. This work continues to guide current thinking about adjustment to trauma.