Chicago Culture Lab

Our Group

The Chicago Culture Lab is a joint laboratory group with Co-PIs from the Booth School of Business (Thomas Talhelm, Joshua Conrad Jackson) and the Psychology Department (Shigehiro Oishi).

Humans have been fascinated by cultural variation for thousands of years, and storytellers from Ibn Battuta to Marco Polo have developed theories for why and how people think and act in different ways across societies. In our laboratory, we are interested in scientifically testing these kinds of stories, and answering deep questions about cultural variation. How did this variation evolve over time? Could we have predicted cultural evolution using geographic, environmental, and institutional differences across societies? How is culture changing in our modern age of globalization and technological innovation?

Announcements

  • July 2025

    Thomas receives the Early Career Award from the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology

  • May 2025

    Thomas receives the Outstanding Alumni Award from the Max Planck Institute’s LIFE program

  • February 2025

    Shige publishes his book, Life in Three Dimensions

  • July 2024

    Shige and Youngjae’s paper on gratitude and indebtedness comes out in the Journal of Positive Psychology

  • April 2024

    Josh and Dan’s paper on worldwide value divergence comes out in Nature Communications

  • January 2024

    Dan and Thomas’s paper on monetary incentives and culture comes out in Nature Human Behavior

  • April 2023

    Shige is elected to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences

  • September 2025

    Hongkun Zhang begins his PhD at USC Marshall School of Business

  • September 2025

    Rong Bai begins her PhD at University of Illinois, Gies College of Business

  • September 2025

    Yuanze Liu begins his PhD at University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

  • September 2025

    Maya Ingram begins her PhD at University of Chicago, Department of Psychology

  • September 2024

    Hongkai Mao begins his PhD at Stanford Graduate School of Business

  • September 2024

    Danila Medvedev begins as a DRRC Postdoc at the Kellogg School of Management