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Xuan Zhao
Research Scientist SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions) Stanford University Department of Psychology Email: xuanzhao@stanford.edu How Do We Connect with Other People? And with Humanlike Machines? |
RESEARCHAs a behavioral scientist, I conduct empirical research to study how social cognition influences our conversation, decision making, and interaction with emerging technologies.
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"Can’t we go five minutes without you checking your flower?"
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"Of course I'm listening. Don't you see me making eye contact, striking an open posture, leaning towards you and nodding empathically?"
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FROM RESEARCH TO APPLICATIONThere is nothing more practical than a good theory. —Kurt Lewin
I am committed to using psychology to help people live better lives. Currently at Stanford, I work with industry partners such as Nextdoor to design and evaluate initiatives to foster respectful and inclusive online conversation and Illumen Capital to foster diversity and inclusion in the investment world.
In an ongoing side project, Flourish, we are committed to bringing decades of psychological research to help people find more joy in life and build more meaningful connections with friends and family, solving the "last-mile problem" of science. In the past, I have also designed and taught "Leading with Empathy" at the Brown Leadership Institute to examine the connections between social cognition and social innovation, and collaborated with behavioral scientists at Booth and improv experts at The Second City to design inclusion and communication workshops such as "Inclusion in Practice: Appreciating Our Differences". Finally, curious to map out the landscape of humanlike robots, I have created the ABOT (Anthropomorphic roBOT) Database—an ever-growing image collection of real-world anthropomorphic robots created for research or commercial purposes. Find out more on my TEACHING and RESOURCES pages. |
MORE ABOUT MEBefore arriving at Stanford SPARQ, I was a postdoc at Chicago Booth and received my PhD in Psychology at Brown University. I also visited the Graduate School of Business and the Department of Psychology at Stanford during graduate school. I received my B.Sc. from Chu Kochen College, Zhejiang University and traveled around the world as part of the Semester At Sea program in my senior year in college. I enjoy reading, writing, public speaking, nature, food, and heartfelt conversations with friends. Find out more on my UPDATES! page.
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Harvesting homegrown tomatoes and checking my flowers in my backyard.
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