About

Catharine Edith Ann Fairbairn is a Helen Corley Petit Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral training in clinical-health psychology spans multiple disciplines, including social psychology and biostatistics, adopting a transdisciplinary perspective that has expanded to include fields such as machine learning and social neuroscience. Her research focuses on social and emotional processes that drive alcohol use, employing lab-based alcohol-administration procedures and ambulatory measures to understand factors motivating heavy drinking. Her work examines alcohol's impact within social contexts and how its social and emotional rewards contribute to the etiology of alcohol use disorder. Fairbairn's research employs diverse measures such as facial muscle movement analysis during live interactions, eye tracking, electroencephalography recordings, photographic measures of drinking contexts, and alcohol biosensors that assess drinking via transdermal means. Her laboratory has also developed a focus on research synthesis, meta-analysis, machine learning applications within addiction science, and the validation of alcohol biosensing technology. Additionally, she is involved in developing social-network based alcohol treatment programs that incorporate biosensor-enhanced recovery support. Her work aims to advance understanding of alcohol use behaviors and develop innovative intervention strategies, with ongoing opportunities for graduate students interested in technology-linked research methods, social neuroscience, and social-network based treatments.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Internal medicine
• Psychiatry
• Machine Learning
• Chemistry
• Social psychology
• Pharmacology
• Medical emergency
• Biology
• Developmental psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Physics
• Neuroscience
• Simulation

Selected publications

• Mobile Health for Alcohol Use Assessment: Longitudinal Effects of Breathalyzer Self-Monitoring in Everyday Contexts

  American Journal of Psychiatry · 2026-02-04 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: Although mobile health-tracking technologies have burgeoned, offering objective health information to consumers on an unprecedented scale, opportunities to directly test effects of such monitoring have been limited. Low-cost mobile breathalyzers are one tool commonly employed for blood alcohol concentration (BAC) assessment. The authors explored outcomes linked with BAC-tracking technologies, examining effects on alcohol use and self-estimation of BAC levels in a large U.S. sample. METHODS: Participants (N=32,179) were individuals who voluntarily purchased a mobile breathalyzer and provided at least three ad-lib readings between 2016 and 2022. A paired smartphone application prompted users to enter a BAC self-estimate (a guess) before the measured BAC level was displayed. Analyses included observations collected during active consumption (BAC >0.00%) from breathalyzer users who opted to share anonymized data. Breathalyzer users who displayed inattentive patterns of guessing were excluded from self-estimation analyses. The final dataset comprised 787,393 BAC readings and 387,643 self-estimates. RESULTS: The accuracy of BAC guesses increased by 2.38% over the course of breathalyzer use. Associations between breathalyzer use and BAC levels varied significantly according to participants' initial drinking levels (b=-0.0062, 95% CI=-0.0065, -0.0059). Among heavy-drinking participants, BAC levels decreased on average from 0.106% to 0.096%, whereas the reverse trend was observed for lighter-drinking participants, whose levels increased from 0.058% to 0.067%. A similar interaction emerged for BAC underestimation (b=-0.0058, 95% CI=-0.0066, -0.0049), with odds of underestimation decreasing among heavy-drinking and increasing among light-drinking participants. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate promise for mobile BAC-tracking technologies as a low-impact intervention with the potential to decrease drinking among individuals who drink heavily-a population particularly susceptible to alcohol-related problems. In contrast, inverted trends emerged for light-drinking individuals, highlighting the need for empirical research in the fast-moving landscape of digital health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring neural markers of incentive salience and real-world drinking among individuals with alcohol use disorder

  Physiology & Behavior · 2026-02-25

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Alcohol cue salience is theorized to play a mechanistic role in alcohol use disorder (AUD), yet links between neural cue reactivity and naturalistic drinking remain undercharacterized. This study combined laboratory event-related potential (ERP) measures with two weeks of ambulatory assessment to evaluate whether alcohol-cue P3b relates to real-world drinking and individual differences in AUD severity. Heavy drinking participants (52 % Female; Ages 21-32) were recruited from the local community. Participants completed two weeks of ecological momentary assessment with continuous transdermal alcohol monitoring and attended three laboratory visits scheduled at one-week intervals. At the final study visit, participants completed an EEG visual oddball task involving the presentation of both infrequent alcohol and non-alcohol beverage target images and frequent household-object standards. Alcohol images elicited significantly larger P3b amplitudes than non-alcohol images across the sample (N = 47), b = 2.13, p = .002. Critically, this alcohol-specific P3b enhancement was concentrated among individuals with pronounced AUD (moderate-severe, N = 20). Objective transdermally-measured ambulatory drinking further moderated neural cue reactivity in the pronounced AUD group: more binge-level days, b = 0.51, p = .020, and higher peak estimated consumption, b = 34.09, p = .044, were associated with stronger alcohol-specific P3b responses. In contrast, neither retrospective baseline nor in-vivo ambulatory self-reports of drinking demonstrated consistent associations. Together, findings indicate that alcohol cue-elicited P3b is (a) sensitive to clinically meaningful severity distinctions and (b) larger among individuals with heavier real-world drinking as captured with objective sensors, supporting its utility as a neurocognitive marker with ecological validity for understanding individual differences in AUD.

  PublisherDOI

• Predicting Treatment Recovery and Adherence in Alcohol Behavioral Couple Therapy using Natural Language Processing

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The impact of alcohol on brain response in social context: A hyperscanning alcohol-administration trial

  NeuroImage · 2025-09-11 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  • The study combines experimental alcohol-administration and EEG hyperscanning to capture acute alcohol effects on interacting brains • Findings indicate significant correlations in event-related potential (ERP) performance monitoring signatures among socially engaged dyads • Alcohol intoxication selectively reduced social (i.e., observational) elements of performance monitoring during task performance in novel social context • Findings offer support for core social dimensions of human cognition, and further indicate potential mechanisms via which alcohol might modulate social experience Evidence for the integration of alcohol into social life dates to the beginning of recorded history. Humans’ tendency to combine social interaction with alcohol has been attributed to alcohol’s ability to shift social perception, with behavioral research suggesting alcohol fosters social connection and diminishes perceived social threat. Yet the acute effects of alcohol on brain responses in social context are as yet unexplored. Combining experimental alcohol-administration with an EEG hyperscanning paradigm, the current study examines the effect of alcohol on evaluation of self- and other-linked performance. Social drinkers (N=128) were administered either an alcoholic (target BAC .08%) or control beverage in pairs. Dyads engaged in a gambling task while event-related potential Feedback Effects (FEs) to wins and losses were assessed simultaneously in both participants. Findings indicated a significant correlation in FEs among players and observers. Results further revealed alcohol effects that emerged specifically in the social domain, with alcohol intoxication significantly reducing the magnitude of FEs among observers paired with a stranger. In contrast, alcohol’s impact on FEs was non-significant when participants observed a familiar partner, as well as when participants were actively engaged in playing. Taken together, findings provide evidence for core social (e.g., observational) dimensions of human cognition and further offer clues surrounding neural pathways supporting the widespread integration of alcohol into social life.

  PublisherDOI

• Objective Assessment in Clinical Psychological Science: Progress in Wearable Alcohol Biosensors

  2025-10-24

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Clinical psychology is a discipline reliant on self-reports, but uniquely susceptible to specific biases associated therewith. Here we review progress in objective behavioral assessment in the domain of alcohol research, introducing an emerging transdermal class of wearable alcohol biosensor. We note challenges of transdermal assessment, together with recent performance gains from updated devices and analytic tools, including machine learning. We indicate unanswered questions for transdermal technology, including whether devices might ultimately produce fine-grained drinking quantity estimates and device longevity. We further identify factors that can impede development of new objective measures, including the tendency to judge new tools against an implicit ideal and consider scientific findings divorced from methodological details. Finally, in evaluating transdermal and other objective measurement tools, we argue for consideration of the specific error type (random vs systematic) generally linked with novel vs existing tools, identifying measurement diversification as a priority for clinical psychology moving forward.

  PublisherDOI

• Exploring associations between drinking contexts and alcohol consumption: An analysis of photographs.

  Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science · 2025-03-06 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  = 60). Participants wore transdermal alcohol biosensors during an ambulatory assessment period, while also taking photographs of their surroundings in response to random prompts. Computer vision methods were employed to extract contextual features from photographs. Results indicated numerous and often potent links between contextual features and patterns of consumption across SPAIS dimensions. Specifically, evening and weekend drinking, drinking during celebrations, drinking in bars, the presence of alcohol-related cues, distracting activity, and crowded, mixed-gender spaces were all associated with elevated levels of consumption. Results represent a step toward the identification of behavioral and structural change targets for alcohol use intervention programs, while at the same time providing new methods for capturing context in the field of addiction science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Digital Technology Prediction of Anger, Aggression, and Violence: Recent Innovations and Methodological Considerations

  Journal of Interpersonal Violence · 2025-05-28

  articleOpen access

  Data derived from smartphone and wearable devices, combined with artificial intelligence/machine learning, have great potential to predict, detect, and respond to emotions and behaviors related to violence, but much remains unknown about the methodology of such an approach. We report on methodological lessons learned from two independent studies ( N = 190) conducted in adults with trauma exposure (Australia), and adult couple dyads with intimate partner violence (United States), respectively, that leveraged real-world smartphone and wearable data collection to predict anger, aggression, and violence. Both studies received ethics approval to collect self-report, physiological, and GPS data. The methodological learnings of these studies showed that at-risk populations will provide valid data regarding sensitive or socially undesirable information with the goal of predicting emotions and behavior. However, there are significant participant, technical, and data challenges, as well as ethical considerations that face this nascent area of research that we synthesize for future projects. The lessons learned from these projects have important implications for prediction of anger, aggression, and violence in at-risk populations.

  PublisherDOI

• The impact of alcohol intoxication on extended vigilance and rest-break recovery

  Attention Perception & Psychophysics · 2025-02-19

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Social Drinking and Addiction: A Social-Cognitive Model for Understanding Alcohol Use Disorder Risk

  Current Directions in Psychological Science · 2025-04-06 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Scientists have long focused on intrapersonal factors and solitary drinking settings in researching addiction etiology. Yet evidence has accumulated to indicate a key role for social contexts in alcohol use disorder development. Here we review four core characteristics of social drinking contexts relevant for the understanding of disordered drinking, including prevalence, developmental timing, negative consequences, and reward value. We present a social-cognitive model aimed at elucidating reinforcement from alcohol in social context, proposing a role for alcohol in inhibiting higher-order cognitive processes that otherwise dampen the experience of social reward. Finally, we review a series of empirical studies providing evidence for the role of social context in alcohol use disorder development, highlighting methodological challenges and indicating directions for future research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Alcohol and emotion: Analyzing convergence between facially expressed and self-reported indices of emotion under alcohol intoxication.

  Psychology of Addictive Behaviors · 2025-01-09

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: Emotion measurement is central to capturing acute alcohol reinforcement and so to informing models of alcohol use disorder etiology. Yet our understanding of how alcohol impacts emotion as assessed across diverse response modalities remains incomplete. The present study leverages a social alcohol-administration paradigm to assess drinking-related emotions, aiming to elucidate impacts of intoxication on self-reported versus behaviorally expressed emotion. METHOD: = 22.5; 50% male; 55% White) attended two counterbalanced laboratory sessions, on one of which they were administered an alcoholic beverage (target blood alcohol content .08%) and on the other a nonalcoholic control beverage. Participants in both conditions were accurately informed of beverage contents and consumed study beverages in assigned groups of three while their behavior was videotaped. Emotion was assessed via self-report as well as continuous coding of facial muscle movements. RESULTS: = .021. Specifically, self-reports and behavioral displays converged among sober but not intoxicated participants. Further, alcohol's effects on positive facial displays remained significant in models controlling for self-reported positive and negative emotion, with alcohol enhancing Duchenne smiles 20% beyond effects captured via self-reports, pointing to unique effects of alcohol on behavioral indicators of positive emotion. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight effects of acute intoxication on the convergence and divergence of emotion measures, thus informing our understanding of measures for capturing emotions that are most proximal to drinking and thus most immediately reinforcing of alcohol consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Examining the Impact of Stress on the Emotionally Reinforcing Properties of Alcohol in Heavy Social Drinkers: A Multimodal Investigation Integrating Laboratory and Ambulatory Methods

  NIH · $3.1M · 2023–2028

• Towards a Wearable Alcohol Biosensor: Examining the Accuracy of BAC Estimates from New-Generation Transdermal Technology using Large-Scale Human Testing and Machine Learning Algorithms

  NIH · $2.2M · 2021–2027

Frequent coauthors

• Michael A. Sayette

  University of Pittsburgh

  16 shared

• Dahyeon Kang

  International Graduate School of English

  14 shared

• Talia Ariss

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  12 shared

• Kasey G. Creswell

  Carnegie Mellon University

  10 shared

• Konrad Bresin

  University of Louisville

  10 shared

• Susan E. Luczak

  Warsaw University of Technology

  9 shared

• I. G. Rosen

  Temple University

  9 shared

• Nigel Bosch

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science
• Lincoln Excellence Assistant Professor at the University of…
• 2020 recipient of the Early Career Investigator award from t…