Jean Decety, Ph.D
Irving B. Harris Professor at the University of Chicago and its College with a primary appointment in the Department of Psychology and a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry.
Director of the Child Neurosuite.
5848 S. University Ave., Kelly 308
Chicago, Illinois 60637
Phone: 773-834-3711
Fax: 773-702-0886
Lab Website: http://scnl.org
The Child Neurosuite Website: childneurosuite.org
Education & Training
- University Claude Bernard, Lyon (France), Ph.D. (neurobiology), 1989.
- Post-doc at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm (Sweden), 1990-1991, in the Departments of Clinical Neurophysiology and Neuroradiology.
- University Claude Bernard, Advanced Master degree in Biological and Medical Engineering Sciences, 1987.
- University Claude Bernard, Advanced Master degree in Neuroscience, 1988.
Research Interests
- Behavioral economics
- Social decision-making
- Political neuroscience
- Antisocial behavior
- Conduct disorder
- Psychopathy
- Developmental affective and social neuroscience
- Moral reasoning in children and adolescents
Teaching
- Multidisciplinary Perspetives on Morality
- Neuroscience and the Media
- The Psychopathic Mind
- The Empathic Brain
- Functional MRI Workshops
- Developmental Human Neuroscience
- Windows to the Social Brain
Society Memberships
- Cognitive Neuroscience Society
- American Psychological Association
- Association for Psychological Science
- Society for Neuroscience
- Society for Personality and Social Psychology
- Organization for Human Brain Mapping
- International Brain Research Association
- Society for Social Neuroscience
- Society for Research in Child Development
Selected Publications
Decety, J. & Yoder, K. J. (2017). The emerging social neuroscience of justice motivation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(1), 6-14.
Chen, C., Decety, J., Huang, P. C., Chen, C. Y. Yau, C. & Cheng, Y. (2016). Testosterone administration in females modulates moral judgment and patterns of brain activation and functional connectivity. Human Brain Mapping, 37, 3417-3430.
Yoder, K. J., Lahey, B. B., & Decety, J. (2016). Callous traits in children with and without conduct problems predict reduced connectivity when viewing harm to others. Nature Scientific Reports, 6: 20216.
Decety, J., Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Uzefovsky, F., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2016). Empathy as a driver of prosocial behavior: Highly conserved neurobehavioral mechanisms across species. Proceedings of the Royal Society London - Biology, 371, 20150077.
Cowell, J., & Decety, J. (2015). Precursors to morality in development as a complex interplay between neural, socio-environmental, and behavioral facets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 112 (41), 12657-12662.
Wolf, R. C., Pujara, M. S., Motzkin, J. C., Newman, J. P., Kiehl, K. A., Decety, J., Kosson, D. S., & Koenigs, M. (2015). Interpersonal traits of psychopathy linked to reduced integrity of the uncinate fasciculus. Human Brain Mapping, 36(10), 4202-4209.
Yoder, K. J., Harenski, C., Kiehl, K. A., & Decety, J. (2015). Neural networks underlying implicit and explicit moral evaluations in psychopathy. Translational Psychiatry, 5, e625.
Decety, J., Lewis, K., & Cowell, J. M. (2015). Specific electrophysiological components disentangle affective sharing and empathic concern in psychopathy. Journal of Neurophysiology, 114, 493-504.
Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2015). Empathy, justice and moral behavior. American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience, 6(3), 3-14.
Yoder, K. J., Porges, E. C., & Decety, J. (2015). Amygdala subnuclei connectivity in response to violence reveals unique influences of individual differences in psychopathic traits in a non-forensic sample. Human Brain Mapping, 36, 1417-1428.
Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2014). The complex relation between morality and empathy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(7), 337-339.
Yoder, K. J., & Decety, J. (2014). The good, the bad, and the just: Justice sensitivity predicts neural response during moral evaluation of actions performed by others. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34(12), 4161-4166.
Books
Social Cognition. J. A. Sommerville and J. Decety (Eds). New York: Routledge (2017).
The Moral Brain: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. J. Decety and T. Wheatley (Eds). Cambridge: MIT Press (2016).
New Frontiers in Social Neuroscience. J. Decety and Y. Christen (Eds). Berlin: Springer (2014).
Empathy: From Bench to Bedside. J. Decety (Ed). Cambridge: MIT Press (2012).
The Oxford Handbook of Social Neuroscience. J. Decety and J. T. Cacioppo (Eds). New York: Oxford University Press (2011).
The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. J. Decety and W. Ickes (Eds). Cambridge: MIT Press (2009).
Interpersonal Sensitivity: Entering Others’ World. J. Decety and C. D. Batson (Eds). Hove: Psychology Press (2007).
Other Activities
- Editor in Chief of Social Neuroscience
- Executive committee member of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience
- Member of the Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering