Psychology Faculty Profiles

Joan Y. Chiao, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Brain, Behavior, and Cognition; Social Psychology

Office: Swift 113
Phone: (847) 467-0481
E-mail: jchiao@northwestern.edu

Links

Curriculum Vitae

Lab

Courses

Research Interests

How do cultural and biological forces give rise to everyday emotion and social interaction? I use a 'cultural neuroscience' framework to investigate how cultural factors influence basic psychological and neural processes underlying social behavior and emotion processing, using functional neuroimaging (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERP), genotyping and behavioral paradigms. Research in my lab also examines how high-level factors, such as race, gender and age, affect basic cognitive, perceptual and emotional processes. At a broader level, I'm interested in integrating psychology and neuroscience research with public policy and population health issues.

Selected Publications

Chiao, J.Y., Mathur, V.A., Harada, T., Lipke, T. (forthcoming). Neural basis of preference for human social hierarchy versus egalitarianism.  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Kuhnen, C.M. & Chiao, J.Y. (in press). Genetic determinants of financial risk-taking. PLoS ONE.

 Chiao, J.Y., Harada, T., Komeda, H., Li, Z., Mano, Y., Saito, D.N., Parrish, T.B., Sadato, N., Iidaka, T. (in press).  Dynamic cultural influences on neural representations of the self.  Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Chiao, J.Y., Harada, T., Komeda, H., Li, Z., Mano, Y., Saito, D.N., Parrish, T.B., Sadato, N., Iidaka, T. (in press).  Neural basis of individualistic and collectivistic views of self.  Human Brain Mapping.

 Chiao, J.Y. (forthcoming). Cultural neuroscience: Visualizing culture-gene influences on brain function.  In Decety, J. and Cacioppo, J. (Eds.) Handbook of Social Neuroscience, Oxford University Press, UK.

Chiao, J.Y., Bowman, N.E., Gill, H. (in press).  The political gender gap: Gender bias in facial inferences that predict voting behavior. PLoS One.

Chiao, J.Y., Harada, T., Oby, E.R. Li, Z., Parrish, T.B., Bridge, D.J.  (in press).  Neural representations of social status hierarchy in human inferior parietal cortex.  Neuropsychologia.

Chiao, J.Y., Li, Z., Harada, T. (in press).  Cultural neuroscience of consciousness: From visual perception to self-awareness. Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Chiao, J.Y., Iidaka, T., Gordon, H.L., Nogawa, J., Bar, M., Aminoff, E., Sadato, N., Ambady, N.  (2008).   Cultural specificity in amygdala response to fear faces.   Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Chiao, J.Y., Adams, R.B., Jr., Tse, P.U., Lowenthal, W.T., Richeson, J.A., Ambady, N.  (2008).   Knowing who is boss: fMRI and ERP investigations of social dominance perception.  Group Relations and Intergroup Processes (Special Issue in Social Neuroscience).

Chiao, J.Y. & Ambady, N. (2007). Cultural neuroscience: Parsing universality and diversity across levels of analysis. In Kitayama, S. and Cohen, D. (Eds.) Handbook of Cultural Psychology, Guilford Press, NY.

Chiao, J.Y., Heck, H.E., Nakayama, K., & Ambady, N. (2006). Priming race in biracial observers affects visual search for Black and White faces. Psychological Science, 17(5), 388-393. pdf

Ambady, N., Chiao, J.Y., Chiu, P., & Deldin, P. (2005). Race and emotion recognition: Insights from a social neuroscience perspective. In Cacioppo, J.T., Pickett, C., Vicker, P., (Eds.) Social Neuroscience: People thinking about thinking people. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Chiao, J.Y., Bordeaux, A.R., & Ambady, N. (2004). Mental representations of social status. Cognition, 93(2), B49-57.

Golby, A.J., Gabrieli, J.D.E., Chiao, J.Y., & Eberhardt, J.L. (2001). Differential fusiform responses to same- and other-race faces. Nature Neuroscience, 4(8), 845-50.