World's Best Scientists 2026 revealed!
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Psychology
USA
2026

D-Index & Metrics

Neuroscience

D-Index
143
Citations
88503
World Ranking
183
National Ranking
119

Psychology

D-Index
144
Citations
88774
World Ranking
95
National Ranking
55

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2026 - Research.com Psychology in United States Leader Award
  • 2025 - Research.com Psychology in United States Leader Award
  • 2010 - Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Overview

Jean Decety is affiliated with the University of Chicago in the United States and has contributed extensively to the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Their research predominantly focuses on clinical psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology, intersecting with areas such as psychiatry and mental health.

Their scholarly work covers a variety of main topics, including the psychology of moral and emotional judgment, psychopathy and forensic psychiatry, child and animal learning development, social and intergroup psychology, child and adolescent psychosocial and emotional development, psychosomatic disorders and their treatments, and neuroendocrine regulation and behavior.

Jean Decety has published frequently in several scientific venues. These include:

  • Scientific Reports
  • Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
  • Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
  • NeuroImage Clinical
  • OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying

Notable recent publications by Jean Decety are:

  • Empathy in Medicine: What It Is, and How Much We Really Need It (2020), The American Journal of Medicine
  • The Emergence of Empathy: A Developmental Neuroscience Perspective (2021), Developmental Review
  • Why Empathy Is Not a Reliable Source of Information in Moral Decision Making (2021), Current Directions in Psychological Science

Frequent co-authors who have collaborated with Jean Decety include:

  • Carla L. Harenski
  • Kent A. Kiehl
  • Keith J. Yoder
  • Morgana Lizzio-Wilson
  • Emma F. Thomas

In recognition of their work, Jean Decety was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2010.

Best Publications

  • The functional architecture of human empathy

    Jean Decety;Philip L. Jackson

  • Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain

    Claus Lamm;Claus Lamm;Claus Lamm;Jean Decety;Tania Singer;Tania Singer

  • The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-taking and Cognitive Appraisal

    Claus Lamm;C. Daniel Batson;Jean Decety

  • Functional anatomy of execution, mental simulation, observation, and verb generation of actions: a meta-analysis.

    Julie Grèzes;Jean Decety

  • How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy.

    Philip L. Jackson;Andrew N. Meltzoff;Jean Decety

  • Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: a PET investigation of agency

    Perrine Ruby;Jean Decety

  • Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience.

    Jean Decety;Claus Lamm

  • Brain activity during observation of actions. Influence of action content and subject's strategy.

    J Decety;J Grèzes;N Costes;D Perani

  • From the perception of action to the understanding of intention

    Sarah-Jayne Blakemore;Jean Decety;Jean Decety

  • Shared representations between self and other: a social cognitive neuroscience view.

    Jean Decety;Jessica A. Sommerville

  • Mapping motor representations with positron emission tomography

    Jean Decety;D. Perani;Marc Jeannerod;V. Bettinardi

  • Neural mechanisms subserving the perception of human actions

    Jean Decety;Julie Grèzes

  • Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats

    Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal;Jean Decety;Peggy Mason

  • The Role of the Right Temporoparietal Junction in Social Interaction: How Low-Level Computational Processes Contribute to Meta-Cognition

    Jean Decety;Claus Lamm

  • A Social-Neuroscience Perspective on Empathy

    Jean Decety;Philip L. Jackson

  • What imitation tells us about social cognition: a rapprochement between developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

    Andrew N. Meltzoff;Jean Decety

  • Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain

    Philip L. Jackson;Eric Brunet;Andrew N. Meltzoff;Jean Decety

  • The power of simulation: imagining one's own and other's behavior.

    Jean Decety;Julie Grèzes

  • Modulating the experience of agency: a positron emission tomography study.

    Chloé Farrer;Nicolas Franck;Nicolas Georgieff;Chris D Frith

  • How Would You Feel versus How Do You Think She Would Feel? A Neuroimaging Study of Perspective-Taking with Social Emotions

    Perrine Ruby;Jean Decety

Frequent Co-Authors

Kent A. Kiehl
Kent A. Kiehl University of New Mexico
Marc Jeannerod
Marc Jeannerod Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS
Agustín Ibáñez
Agustín Ibáñez Adolfo Ibáñez University
Claus Lamm
Claus Lamm University of Vienna
Michael Koenigs
Michael Koenigs University of Wisconsin–Madison
Andrew N. Meltzoff
Andrew N. Meltzoff University of Washington
John T. Cacioppo
John T. Cacioppo University of Chicago
Philip L. Jackson
Philip L. Jackson Université Laval
Julie Grèzes
Julie Grèzes École Normale Supérieure
Vince D. Calhoun
Vince D. Calhoun Georgia State University

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