Jean Decety

Jean Decety is a leading scholar on the social neuroscience of empathy, as well as other topics related to neurobiological underpinnings of social cognition.

His work has led to new understandings of empathy and affective processes in typically developing individuals as well as children with aggressive conduct disorder and psychopaths. His research uses functional neuroimaging techniques (functional MRI, MEG and ERP) combined with eye–tracking, autonomic measures (skin conductance, heart rate variability) and behavioral paradigms, to examine several biological and social variables that are susceptible to modulate empathetic responses. Decety and his lab team also focus on the neurodevelopment of empathy and moral reasoning in children and adolescents.

Decety is an executive committee member of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, and a member of the Committee on Neurobiology, and of the Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering. He is editor of the journal Social Neuroscience and serves on the editorial boards of Development and Psychopathology, Neuropsychologia, Frontiers in Emotion, as well as the Scientific World Journal in the domain of higher-level brain function. He is the co-founder of the Society for Social Neuroscience.

Decety is co-director of the Brain Research Imaging Center at the University of Chicago Medical Center and is head of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago.