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Xuan Zhao, Ph.D.
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? |
RESEARCHHow can we create better social interactions and conversations in person and online, where people feel seen, heard, and appreciated? And what can robots and emerging technologies teach us about being human?
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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 conversation on social media and Illumen Capital to foster diversity and inclusion in the investment world.
In my startup project, Flourish, we are bringing decades of psychological research into a daily well-being app to help people find more happiness in life and build more meaningful connections with friends and family. In the past, I have also designed and taught "Leading with Empathy" at the Brown Leadership Institute to examine 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 co-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.
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Harvesting homegrown tomatoes and checking my flowers in my backyard.
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