People

Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory

Jean Decety

Jean Decety (Ph.D. in Neuroscience) is Irving B. Harris Distinguished Professor of Psychology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago and the College. He is the Director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab and the Child Neurosuite. Decety’s research relies on integrating knowledge across multiple levels of analyses, the perspective that characterizes social neuroscience. He also highly values teaching undergraduates as it motivates to think about the long road, and find meaningful links with other disciplines including evolutionary psychology, economics, sociology and political science.

email: decety [AT] uchicago.edu

Abdulaziz Alhothi

Abdulaziz grew up in Qatar. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University with a minor in Mathematics. He is a MAPSS candidate seeking to examine the driving factors of how people perceive their own moral values and how empathy intervenes in moral decision-making. Coming from a rapidly developing country in terms of politics and religion, Abdulaziz is particularly interested in exploring the validity and reliability of various ways to measure moral decision-making in the context of Arab and Islamic societies.

email: a.alhothi [AT] gmail.com

Qiongwen (Jovie) Cao

Qiongwen (Jovie) received her B.A. in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Southern California, where she studied the effects of attribute salience on intertemporal choice. Jovie is a Ph.D. student in the Integrative Neuroscience program interested in morality and social decision-making. Specifically, she examines how social context and culture affect moral decisions and the valuations of human lives. Jovie’s work combines behavioral economics, eye-tracking, and cognitive neuroscience to understand the underlying mechanisms of moral decisions.

email: qiongwenc [AT] uchicago.edu

Jie Chen

Jie is a Ph.D. student in Computational Neuroscience. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Applied Psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2021. Before joining UChicago’s PhD program in 2023, Jie worked as Lab Manager at Yu Emotion Science Lab at UC Santa Barbara studying value-based decision-making in various social contexts. She is interested in exploring the neural and computational mechanisms underlying how emotions and moral judgments are related to decision-making. She is particularly interested in how decisions and judgments are guided by moral conviction.

email: jchen28 [AT] uchicago.edu

Michael Cohen

Michael Cohen earned a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA, and has had prior postdoctoral training at Northwestern University and University of Pennsylvania. Much of his prior work has used behavioral and fMRI methods to examine effects of conscious strategies and non-strategic effects of reward when people learn information of varying importance. In the SCNL, Michael used fMRI, cognitive science methods and computational modeling to examine how moral convictions motivate political activism and political violence.

email: mscohen [AT] uchicago.edu

Simone Compton

Simone earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Tennessee State University. Her academic journey led her through prestigious Post Baccalaureate positions at both Yale University and Duke University. Presently, she is a MAPSS student with a concentration in Psychology. She would like to explore the mechanisms underpinning morality, empathy, prosociality, and social decision-making among minors living in harsh and unpredictable environments.

email: scompton1 [AT] uchicago.edu

Elodie Corvaisier

Elodie is a doctoral student in Economics. She holds a Master in International Economy and Development from the University Paris Dauphine. Elodie studies the impact of armed conflict violence exposure and forced displacement on children’s social preferences in the Sahel region of Africa. These findings are also examined from a gendered perspective, in particular, the intergenerational transfer of social norms from mothers to their daughters. Elodie’s main research interests rely on Development Economics, Gender Economics, Behavioral and Experimental Economics.

Email: elodiecc35 [AT] gmail.com

Annalise Halverson

Annalise is a Master’s student concentrating in Psychology at the University of Chicago. During her time as an undergraduate, she worked under Dr. David Cicero at the University of Hawai’i studying early onset schizophrenia. She is currently interested in how we classify psychopathy, as well as the intersections that exist between borderline personality disorder and emotional comprehension among female psychopaths. When not in the lab, she enjoys doing hot yoga, exploring the city, and rewatching old episodes of Friends.

Email: asdh [AT] uchicago.edu

Yingzi (Jay) Jin

Yingzi (Jay) received zir B.S. in Mathematics and Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego. Ze is a student in the Master in Computational Social Science, interested in empathy, group identity, bias, prosocial behaviors, and influence of social media. Jay investigates what factors affect empathy and how social media influences group identity and bias. Ze regards data science as a very powerful tool to do psychology research. In zir leisure time, Jay likes singing, enjoying classical concerts, wine tasting, and photography.

email: jinyz [AT] uchicago.edu

Joanna Li

Joanna received her B.A. from Georgetown University, where she studied Psychology and Biology under the mentorship of Dr. Abigail Marsh. Currently, she is a MAPSS student whose research centers on altruism, prosocial decision-making, and moral psychology. In particular, she is captivated by the mechanisms that drive compassion–especially to extraordinary degrees. She is a big fan of open science, Hank Green, and Jeopardy.

email: ll1123 [AT] uchicago.edu

 Haocheng (Tino) Ma

Haocheng grew up in Tianjin and Wuhan, China. He is now a MAPSS student at the University of Chicago. Haocheng received his B.S. in Engineering and Psychology from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. He was previously a research assistant at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He also studied at Osaka University and Hokkaido University in Japan. Haocheng is interested in developmental science, empathy, moral reasoning, and cognitive science. He speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and some Spanish. He enjoys scuba diving and swimming.

email: mhc [AT] uchicago.edu

Undergraduate students

Ava Cho
Second year at the College
Majoring in Neuroscience and Psychology

Amelia Gibbs
Third year at the College
Majoring in Cognitive Science

Aseem Gidwani
Second year at the College
Majoring in Neuroscience

Audrey Kaye 
Second year at the College
Majoring in Neuroscience 

Jeffrey Ke 
Second year at the College
Majoring in Psychology and Economics 

 

Hina Masuda-Singh 
Second year at the College
Majoring in Neuroscience and Psychology

Nishtha Sharma
Third year at the College
Majoring in Economics

Victor Roberts
Second year at the College
Majoring in Economics and Psychology

Nell Rydzewski
Fourth year at the College
Majoring in Economics and Cognitive Science

 Adina Ziv
Second year at the College
Majoring in Economics and Psychology

Fun facts about us

Two-third of lab members have either lived or visited Hong Kong several times. Many of us have relatives and/or lived in Malaysia, Australia, China, Singapore, Sweden, Hong Kong, Israel, France, South Africa, United Kingdom and the US.
🇲🇾 🇦🇺 🇨🇳 🇸🇬 🇸🇪 🇭🇰 🇮🇱 🇫🇷 🇿🇦 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

English is obviously our lingua franca, but Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindi, French, Hebrew, Polish, Urdu, Swedish and Japanese are also spoken.

Collaborations

Marie Claire Villeval 🇫🇷
Experimental economics
CNRS-Lyon University, France

Winnifred Louis 🇦🇺
Social psychology
University of Queensland, Australia

Yuan Chang Leong 🇺🇸
Social psychology and social neuroscience
University of Chicago, United States

Fang Cui 🇨🇳
Experimental psychology
Shenzhen University, China

Rhea Arini 🇬🇧
Social psychology
University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
 

Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
5848 S. University Avenue

Chicago, IL 60637