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
Hanying Yao
Lab Manager
E-mail: hanying.yao@chicagobooth.edu
Hanying is a research professional at the Booth School of Business and serves as the lab manager for Josh. She is broadly interested in how human cognition and behaviour are shaped by broader societal structures and how individuals and societies respond to global transformations. Her research focuses on using computational methods to explore identity and belief systems in social, cultural, moral, and political dimensions.
Jacob Zhang
Lab Manager
E-mail: jacobz@uchicago.edu
Jacob is the lab manager for Professor Oishi. He is interested in wellbeing research and cultural psychology.
Shiyun Cao
Full-time Research Assistant
E-mail: sycao@uchicago.edu
Shiyun is a full-time research assistant and an MA alumna of UChicago, with a multidisciplinary background in Psychology, Economics, and Communication. She is interested in the interaction between psychological adaptation and the evolution of social norms and values. She is particularly interested in how modernization reshapes the landscape of cultural traits and sometimes produces mismatches.
Postdoctoral Researchers
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.
Maya Ingram
PhD Student
Maya is a first-year graduate student working with 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 broadly interested in how people have conceptualized a good life across time and cultures. She hopes to further investigate the underpinnings of well-being, specifically focusing on the dimension of psychological richness.
E-mail: mayaingram@uchicago.edu
Yuanze Liu
PhD Student
Website E-mail: yuanze.liu@chicagobooth.edu
Yuanze is a graduate student for Josh at the Booth School of Business. 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.
Graelin Mandel
PhD Student
E-mail: gmandel0@chicagobooth.edu
Graelin is a Behavioral Science PhD student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Graelin studies positive behavior change, and people's interactions with and perceptions of emerging technologies.
Graelin graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as a Joseph Wharton Scholar. Before joining Booth, Graelin spent several years as a digital product manager. She worked most recently at The Farmer’s Dog as a Retention Product Manager, where she led the pipeline of experiments applying behavioral science to improve customer retention. Prior to that, Graelin was a Growth Product Manager at Marcus Invest by Goldman Sachs, where she helped launch a digital investing app for mass market consumers.
Master’s Students
Mengmeng Wu
Master’s Student
E-mail: moewu@uchicago.edu
Mengmeng Wu is a master’s student in Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the impact of emerging technologies on cultural evolution, with methodological interests in natural language processing (NLP) and social network analysis. More specifically, her projects examine how people’s attitudes toward AI change over time and how bot moderation shapes people social learning in online communities.
Xueyan (Shirley) Zhang
Master’s Student
E-mail: xueyan1220@uchicago.edu
Xueyan (Shirley) is a master’s student in the Computational Social Science program with an Economics concentration at the University of Chicago. Her research interests span behavioral science and development economics, focusing on utilizing computational methods to study social norms, stereotypes, discrimination, and their impacts on decision-making and inequality.
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.
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.
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.
Rui Sun
E-mail: Rui.Sun1@esade.edu
Rui Sun is an Assistant Professor in Marketing at ESADE Business School. Prior to joining ESADE, she was a Principal Researcher (postdoc) & Statistical Consultant at the Roman Family Center for Decision Research, Chicago Booth School of Business. 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.
Yuejiao Jiang
E-mail: yuejiaoj@uchicago.edu
Yuejiao Jiang is a PhD student at Boston College who is interested in the interactions between societal changes and human behaviors. She was a research assistant at the Chicago Culture Lab.