Olson and co-authors Elizabeth A. Baiocchi-Wagner, Jessica M. Wilson-Kratzer, and Sarah E. Symonds published a book entitled The Dark Side of Family Communication.
Her other scholarly interests include the dark side of family and close relationships, intimate partner violence, and the luring communication of child sex predators.
This book combines research and theories that look into the dark side of family communication, which involves the verbal and nonverbal messages that are deemed harmful, morally suspect, and/or socially unacceptable.
Other topics that are deemed as less dark are also looked into such as parent/child conflict and the impact of narcissism on family members communicative behaviors.
The journal article presented a study that investigated the link between exposure to television that is high in interpersonal conflict and viewers' use of control in their romantic relationships.