Principal Investigators
Joshua Conrad Jackson
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor
Josh is an Assistant Professor at the Booth School of Business, and a co-PI of the Chicago Culture Lab. His research focuses on how culture and psychology co-evolve over time. He is especially interested in how social psychology adapted to the evolution of large and diverse human societies throughout human history, and how new trends involving technology and globalization may change our social psychologies in the future. He received his BA from McGill University in 2013, his PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2021, and worked at the Kellogg School of Management for two years as a post-doctoral fellow before joining Booth.
Shigehiro Oishi
Marshall Field IV Professor in the Department of Psychology and the College
Shigehiro Oishi is the Marshall Field IV Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on culture, social ecology, and well-being. He is particularly interested in asking questions surrounding the concept of well-being (e.g. "What is a good life?"), the predictors of well-being (e.g. "What are the predictors of a good life?"), and the consequences of well-being (e.g. "Are there benefits to a happy/meaningful/psychologically rich life?"). Furthermore, he is interested in how the concepts, the predictors, and the consequences of well-being might differ across cultures. Additionally, his research explores socio-ecological conditions that are detrimental or conducive to well-being (e.g., income inequality, residential mobility, walkability).
Thomas Talhelm
Associate Professor
Thomas is an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He studies culture--how they differ, where those differences come from, and whether they're disappearing or actually strengthening in the modern world. He started studying culture at the University of Michigan. He did his PhD at the University of Virginia with Shige Oishi, researched in China for a year on a Fulbright Scholarship, and came to Chicago in 2015.
Lab Managers
Yuanze Liu
Lab Manager
Website E-mail: yuanze.liu@chicagobooth.edu
Yuanze is a research professional at the Booth School of Business and serves as the lab manager for Josh. He is broadly interested in culture, language, politics, and intergroup relations, and always attempts to combine these topics in his research through an interdisciplinary approach. The overarching question that especially fascinates him is how to ”live together“ while “being yourself.“ He wants to investigate this question at different levels (e.g., interpersonal, intercultural, and between political divides) using a culturally and psychologically wise perspective.
Maya Ingram
Lab Manager
Maya is a lab manager for Shige. As an undergraduate at Yale she studied English, where she first became interested in using humanities to further our understanding of the mind. She is interested in the concept of psychological richness, specifically to find ways in which psychologically rich experiences can encourage empathy and connection between people.
E-mail: mayaingram@uchicago.edu
Postdoctoral Researchers
Danila Medvedev
Post Doc
Dan got his PhD from Chicago Booth in Behavioral Science and is now the DRRC postdoctoral fellow at Kellogg. He is interested in how incentive structures prevalent in people's environments influence how they think and act.
Rui Sun
Post Doc
Website E-mail: Rui.Sun@chicagobooth.edu
Rui Sun is a postdoc researcher at the Roman Family Center for Decision Research. She is interested in emotion and decision-making, prosociality, and wellbeing. She has a broad interest in how culture shapes emotion, wellbeing, and (consumer) decision-making. She has published in Psychological Science, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Emotion, and other journals.
PhD Students
Nicholas DiMaggio
PhD Student
Website E-mail: ndimaggi@uchicago.edu
Nich is a graduate student in Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business interested in the intersection of cultural, socioecological, and moral psychology. Specifically, he is interested in how culture and history influence how we perceive and respond to individual, group, and systemic threats.
Youngjae Cha
PhD Student
E-mail: yjcha@uchicago.edu
Youngjae is a social psychology Ph.D. student. He is interested in social ecology, psychological richness, and curiosity.
Felicia Joy
PhD Student
E-mail: felicia0@chicagobooth.edu
Felicia Joy is a PhD student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Department of Psychology, pursuing a doctorate degree in Behavioral Science. She has professional experience in both academia and industry. She launched the Behavioral Science capability at Edelman within the Business Transformation group, where she advises Fortune 500 companies on strategy, corporate affairs, culture, and organizational behavior. She is also a Nike PhD Research Fellow. Felicia previously served as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and currently co-teaches two MBA courses on workplace culture at Chicago Booth: Culture as a Competitive Business Advantage and Culture: Asset or Risk. She is co-author of the book I Don’t Just Work Here: The New Purpose of Workplace Culture. Felicia’s research interests include workplace culture, quality of life, and the psychology of conversation, including conversational receptiveness and feedback.
Ugur Mert Yasar (Umy)
PhD Student
CV E-mail: umy@chicagobooth.edu
Ugur Mert Yasar (Umy) is a Behavioral Science PhD student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Umy's behavioral science research can be grouped into two goals:
1. Mapping out cultural variation exhibited by people living under different institutional structures
2. Finding out how efficiently anti-poverty policies affect populations with different cultures
By bringing in insights from cultural psychology, he aims to inform the better design of tailored anti-poverty policies.
Research Assistants
Yutong Jiang
Research Assistant
E-mail: yutongj@uchicago.edu
Yutong (Jessica) Jiang is a graduated Master’s student in Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago. She has a strong background in survey research, data analysis, and statistical analysis. Her research interests include affective psychology, big data, and social media study. Originally from China, she brings a diverse perspective to her work.
Hongkun Zhang
Research Assistant
E-mail: hongkunz@uchicago.edu
Hongkun is a master’s student in the Computational Social Science program with an Economics concentration at the University of Chicago. His research interests lie at the intersection of cultural evolution and economic exchange, as well as the transformation of political values across different countries.
Jacob Zhang
Research Assistant
E-mail: jacobz@uchicago.edu
Jacob Zhang is a fourth year undergraduate student, majoring in Psychology and Economics. He is interested in wellbeing research and cultural psychology.
Yuejiao Jiang
Research Assistant
E-mail: yuejiaoj@uchicago.edu
Yuejiao Jiang is a UoC alumni who is interested in the interactions between societal changes and human behaviors.
Brian Ge
Research Assistant
E-mail: mindworks@chicagobooth.edu
Brian Ge is a research professional at UChicago Booth’s Roman Family Center for Decision Research. He has an interest in existential psychological topics, including worldview beliefs, meaning-making processes, and the value systems of authoritarianism.
Ruoqi (Jasmine) Zheng
Research Assistant
E-mail: mindworks@chicagobooth.edu
Ruoqi Zheng is a recent graduate from the MAPSS program of UChicago. She is interested in the intersect of culture psychology and intimate relationship. More specifically, she is interested in the changes in ideology of family over history, and how it affects individual’s well-being.
Yingxue Liu
Research Assistant
E-mail: yingxueliu@uchicago.edu
Yingxue is a research assistant for Shige, and interested in self system, social ecology, psychological richness and new methods to gather and analyze data for social science research.
Shiyun Cao
Research Assistant
E-mail: sycao@uchicago.edu
Shiyun is a Master’s student at the University of Chicago, with a multidisciplinary undergraduate background in Communication, Psychology, and Economics. Her research interests lie in exploring the historical change and regional variation of norms and values through the lens of cultural evolution. Additionally, she seeks to investigate the implications of misalignment on individuals when they struggle to identify with their socio-cultural environments.
Brett Peterson
Research Assistant
E-mail: brettn.peterson@gmail.com
Brett Peterson (they/them) is a recent graduate from the MAPSS program at UChicago as well as the current Lab Manager for the HEAL Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They are interested broadly in how racial diversity and cultural dynamics impact subjective well-being and mental health, by exploring how experiences of cross-cultural engagement or alienation shape how people form personal values or process mental health challenges, such as traumatic events. They also work on developing more culturally sensitive resources for educators and mental health providers.
Alumni
Hongkai Mao
E-mail: mailto:hm404@stanford.edu
Hongkai is a PhD student in the Organizational Behavior Program at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. His research focuses on negative social interactions, such as toxicity, conflicts, and polarization, across interpersonal and organizational levels. He aims to understand how people perceive their surroundings and identify the conditions that may or may not lead to unfavorable outcomes. Ultimately, He hopes to propose solutions to reduce the impact of these negative interactions.