Karen Rook is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine, USA, where she has also served as a department chair and associate dean.

Her research over the past 30 years has sought to understand how social relationships enhance or detract from health and well-being. This interest has led her to examine the health-related effects of negative, as well as positive, social exchanges. It has also led her to examine not only social support but also companionship and control (or regulation), as important functions of social relationships that affect health and well-being in distinctive ways. By adopting this broad perspective, her work has helped to stimulate research on previously neglected mechanisms by which social relationships may influence health.