Fredda Blanchard-Fields was a professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Psychology. As director of the "School of Psychology’s Adult Development Laboratory", Blanchard-Fields led research efforts that address social-cognitive processes in everyday life, from adolescence to older adulthood. Recognizing that a great deal of psychological research has focused on ways in which cognitive abilities in adulthood decline with older age, Blanchard-Fields, as a gerontologist, and her colleagues focused on investigating domains in which adults continue to grow and develop throughout the lifespan and contribute to their competence in the social realm.