Publications
In Press
Davis, M., Konrath, S., Breithaupt, F., Cameron, D., Decety, J., de Waal, F… & Zaki, J. (in press). What we talk about when we talk about empathy: Toward a common lexicon of empathy-related constructs. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
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2026
Kahhale, I., Hackel, L., & Zaki, J. (2026). Balancing emotional scales: Empathy and dehumanization in legal contexts. Emotion, 26(1), 97–112.
Nook, E. C., & Zaki, J. (2026). Empathy Regulation in Clinical Science: Regulating the Therapeutic Emotional Circuit. Clinical Psychological Science, 0(0).
Santos, L. A., Garton, C., & Zaki, J. (2026). Repairing cognitive distortions in political divides. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 30(1), 13–25.
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Ibonie, S. G., Villanueva, C. M., Reddan, M. C., Rosa, L., Hargrove, R., Weinstock, L. M., Carter, M., Wager, T. D., Zaki, J., & Gruber, J. (2026). Prosocial behaviors across bipolar and major depressive mood disorders: A preliminary investigation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 412, 122073.
2025
Fang, W. M., Courtney, A., Jackson, M. O., & Zaki, J. (2025). Differences in perceived social connection help explain SES-based gaps in well-being. Social Networks, 82, 55–64.
Grayson, S., Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Zaki, J. (2025). Ironic effects of prosocial gossip in driving inaccurate social perceptions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 116, Article 104682.
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Lee, A. Y., Neumann, E., Zaki, J., & Hancock, J. (2025). Americans overestimate how many social media users post harmful content. PNAS Nexus, 4(12), Article pgaf310.
Pei, R., Grayson, S. J., Appel, R. E., Soh, S., Garcia, S. B., Bouwer, A., Huang, E., Jackson, M. O., Harari, G. M., & Zaki, J. (2025). Bridging the empathy perception gap fosters social connection. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(10), 2121–2134.
Reddan, M.C., Ong, D.C., Wager, T.D. et al (2025). Neural signatures of emotional intent and inference align during social consensus. Nat Commun 16, 6156.
Zaki, J. & Stellar, J. (2025). Moral emotions. The Handbook of Social Psychology, 6th Edition.
2024
Reddan, M., Garcia, S., Golarai, G., Eberhardt, J., & Zaki, J. (2024). Film intervention increases empathic understanding of formerly incarcerated people and support for criminal justice reform. PNAS.
Voelkel, J., Stagnaro, M., … Zaki, J., … & Willer, R. (2024). Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity. Science 386(6719).
Santos, L., Voelkel, J., Willer, R., & Zaki, J. (2024). Positive beliefs about cross-partisan empathy can strengthen Americans’ support for democracy. PNAS Nexus.
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Roshanaei, M., Vaid, S., Courtney, A., Soh, S., Zaki, J., & Harari, G. (2024). Meaningful peer social interactions and momentary well-being in context. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Kahhale, I., Barry, K., Ong, D., Zaki, J., & Hanson, J. (2024). Exploring the Role of Empathy in the Association Between Early Life Adversity and Antisocial Behavior. Affective Science.
Courtney, A., Baltiansky, D., Fang, W., Roshanai, M., Aybas, Y., Samuels, N., Wetchler, E., Wu, Z., Jackson, M., & Zaki, J. (2024). Social microclimate and well-being. Emotion, 24(3), 836-846.
Ruggeri, K., Stock, S. … Zaki, J. … Van Bavel, J., Willer, R. (2024). A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19. Nature 625, 134-147 .
2022
Weisz, E., Chen, P., Ong, D.C., Carlson, R.W., Clark, M.D., & Zaki, J (2022). A brief intervention to motivate empathy among middle school students. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1-35.
Goldenberg, A., Schone, J., Huang, Z., Sweeny, T.D., Ong, D.C., Brady, T.F., Robinson, M.M., Levari, D., Zaki, J., & Gross, J.J. (2022) Amplification in the evaluation of emotional expressions over time. Nature Human Behavior, 1-42.
Santos, L.A., Voelkel, J.G., Willer, R., & Zaki, J. (2022) Belief in the utility of cross-partisan empathy reduces partisan animosity and facilitates political persuasion. Psychological Science, 1557-1573.
Aknin, L. B., Andretti, B., Goldszmidt, R., Helliwell, J. F., Petherick, A., De Neve, J. E., ... & Zaki, J. (2022). Policy stringency and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of psychological distress and life evaluations in 15 countries. Lancet Public Health. e417-e426.
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Ong, D. C., Soh, H., Zaki, J., & Goodman, N. D. (2022). Applying probabilistic programming to affective computing. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 306-317.
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Aknin, L.B., De Neve, J.E., Dunn, E.W., Fancourt, D.E., Goldberg, E., Helliwell, J.F., Jones, S.P., Karam, E., Layard, R., Lyubomirsky, S., Rzepa, A., Saxena, S., Thornton, E.M., VanderWeele, T.J., Whillans, A.V., Zaki, J., Karadag, O., & Ben Amor, Y. (2022). Mental Health during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A review and recommendations for moving forward. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1-22.
Fast, A.A., Morelli, S.A., Zaki, J., & Olson, K.R. (2022). Mutual identification promotes children's generosity. Infant and Child Development, 1-18.
Genzer, S., Ong, D.C., Zaki, J., & Perry, A. (2022). Mu rhythm suppression over sensorimotor regions is associated with greater empathic accuracy. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1-48.
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2021
Slavich, G.M., Roos, L.G., & Zaki, J. (2021). Social belonging, compassion, and kindness: Key ingredients for fostering resilience, recovery, and growth from the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 1-8.
Ong, D. C., Wu, Z., Tan, Z. X., Reddan, M., Kahhale, I., Mattek, A., & Zaki, J. (2021). Modeling emotion in complex stories: the Stanford Emotional Narratives Dataset. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 579-594.
Zaki, J., Neumann, E., & Baltiansky, D. (2021). Market cognition: How exchange norms alter social experience. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 30(3): 236-241.
Carlson, R.W., Zaki, J. (2021). Belief in altruistic motives predicts prosocial actions and inferences. Psychological Reports, 1-22.
Rathje, S., Hackel, L., & Zaki, J. (2021). Attending live theatre improves empathy, changes attitudes, and leads to pro-social behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 95.
2020
Jospe, K., Genzer, S., Selle, N.K., Ong, D., Zaki, J., & Perry, A. (2020). The contribution of linguistic and visual cues to physiological synchrony and empathic accuracy. Cortex, 132: 296-308.
Van Bavel, J.J., Baicker, K., Boggio, P.S., Zaki, J., et al. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nat Hum Behav.
Zaki, J. (2020). The caregiver's dilemma: In search of sustainable medical empathy. The Lancet, 396: 458-459.
Zaki, J. (2020). Catastrophe compassion: Understanding and explaining prosociality under crisis. Trends in Cognitive Science, 24(8): 587-589.
Zaki, J. (2020). Integrating empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation. Annual Review of Psychology, 71: 517-540.
Goldenberg, A., Garcia, D., Halperin, E., Zaki, J., Kong, D., Golarai, G., & Gross, J. (2020). Beyond emotional similarity: The
role of situation-specific motives. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(1): 138-159.
Chwyl, C., Chen, P., & Zaki, J. (2020). Beliefs about self-compassion: Implications for coping and self-improvement. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: 1-16.
Leong, Y. C., Chen, J., Willer, R., & Zaki, J. (2020). Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(44): 27731-27739.
Weisz, E., Ong, D. C., Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2020). Building empathy through motivation-based interventions. Emotion.
2019
Wu, Z., Zhang, X., Zhi-Xuan, T., Zaki, J., & Ong, D. C. (2019). Attending to emotional narratives. To be presented at Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) 2019.
Leong, Y. C., Hughes, B. L., Wang, Y., & Zaki, J. (2019). Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying motivated seeing. Nature Human Behavior.
Morrison, A. S., Mateen, M. A., Brozovich, F. A., Zaki, J., Goldin, P. R., Heimberg, R. G., & Gross, J. J. (2019). Changes in empathy mediate the effects of cognitive behavioral group therapy but not mindfulness-based stress reduction for social anxiety disorder. Behavior Therapy.
Ong, D. C., Zaki, J., & Goodman, N. D. (2019). Computational models of emotion inference in theory of mind: A review and roadmap. Topics in Cognitive Science, 11(2), 338-357.
2018
Carlson, R. W., & Zaki, J. (2018). Good deeds gone bad: Lay theories of altruism and selfishness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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Leong, Y.C., & Zaki, J. (2018). Unrealistic optimism in advice taking: A computational account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
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Hackel, L. M., & Zaki, J. (2018). Propagation of economic inequality through reciprocity and reputation. Psychological Science, 29(4), 604-613.
Williams, W. C., Morelli, S. A., Ong, D. C., & Zaki, J. (2018). Interpersonal emotion regulation: Implications for affiliation, perceived support, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 224-254.
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Tamir, D.I., Templeton, E.M., Ward, A.F., & Zaki, J. (2018). Media usage diminishes memory for experiences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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Weisz, E. & Zaki, J. (2018). Motivated empathy: A social neuroscience perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, 24, 67-71.
Pehrs, C., Zaki, J., Taruffi, L., Kuchinke, L., & Koelsch, S. (2018). Hippocampal-temporopolar connectivity contributes to episodic simulation during social cognition. Scientific Reports, 8, Article number: 9409.
Morelli, S. A., Knutson, B. K., & Zaki, J. (2018). Neural sensitivity to personal and vicarious reward differentially relate to prosociality and well-being. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 13(8), 831-839.
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Morelli, S. A., Leong, Y. C., Carlson, R. W., Kullar, M., & Zaki, J. (2018). Neural detection of socially valued community members. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(32), 8149-8154.
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Ong, D. C., Goodman, N. D., & Zaki, J. (2018). Happier than thou? A self-enhancement bias in emotion attribution. Emotion, 18(1), 116-126.
Herrera, F., Bailenson, J., Weisz, E., Ogle, E., & Zaki, J. (2018). Building long-term empathy: A large-scale comparison of traditional and virtual reality perspective-taking. PLoS One, 13(10).
2017
Hackel, L. M., Zaki, J., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Social identity shapes social valuation: Evidence from prosocial behavior and vicarious reward. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(8), 1219-1228.
Hackel, L. M., & Zaki, J. (2017). My brain contains multitudes: The value of a flexible approach to identity. Psychological Inquiry, 28:2-3, 99-102.
Morelli, S.A., Ong, D.C., Makati, R., Jackson, M.O., & Zaki, J. (2017). Empathy and well-being correlate with centrality in different social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Ong, D. C., Zaki, J., & Gruber, J. (2017). Increased cooperative behavior across remitted bipolar I disorder and major depression: Insights utilizing a behavioral economic trust game. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(1), 1.
Pehrs, C., Zaki, J., Schlochtermeier, L. H., Jacobs, A. M., Kuchinke, L., & Koelsch, S. (2017). The temporal pole top-down modulates the ventral visual stream during social cognition. Cerebral Cortex, 27(1), 777-792.
Weisz, E. & Zaki, J. (2017). Empathy-building interventions: A review of exisiting work and suggestions for future directions. In Seppala, E. M., Simon-Thomas, E., Brown, S. L., Worline, M. C., Cameron, C. D., & Doty, J. R. (Eds.), Oxford handbook of compassion science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
2016
Nook, E. C., Ong, D. C., Morelli, S. A., Mitchell, J. P., & Zaki, J. (2016). Prosocial conformity: Prosocial norms generalize across behavior and empathy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(8), 1045-1062.
Devlin, H. C., Zaki, J., Ong, D. C., & Gruber, J. (2016). Tracking the emotional highs but missing the lows: Hypomania risk is associated with positively biased empathic inference. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 40(1), 72-29.
Hughes, B., Ambady, N., & Zaki, J. (2016). Trusting outgroup, but not ingroup members, requires control: Neural and behavioral evidence. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience.
Hughes, B., Zaki, J., & Ambady, N. (2016). Motivation alters impression formation and related neural systems. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience.
Morrison, A. S., Mateen, M. A., Brozovich, F. A., Zaki, J., Goldin, P. R., Heimberg, R. G., & Gross, J. J. (2016). Empathy for positive and negative emotions in social anxiety disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 87, 232-242.
Templeton, E.M., Stanton, M.V., & Zaki, J. (2016). Social norms shift preferences for healthy and unhealthy foods. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166286.
Zaki, J. (2016). Moving beyond stereotypes of empathy: response to Bloom (2016). Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Oh, S. Y., Bailenson, J., Weisz, E., & Zaki, J. (2016). Virtually old: Embodied perspective taking and the reduction of ageism under threat. Computers in Human Behavior. 60, 398-410.
Zaki, J. (2016). Empathy is a moral force. In Gray, K. & Graham, J. (Eds.), The atlas of moral psychology (pp.49-58). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Zaki, J., Kallman, S., Wimmer, G. E., Ochsner, K., & Shohamy, D. (2016). Social cognition as reinforcement learning: Feedback modulates emotion inference. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Olsson, A., McMahon, K., Papenberg, G., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., Ochsner, K. (2016). Vicarious fear learning depends on empathic appraisals and trait empathy. Psychological Science, 27(1), 25-33.
Zaki, J. & Ochsner, K. (2016). Empathy. In Feldman-Barrett, L., Lewis, M., & Haviland-Jones, J. M. (Eds.): Handbook of Emotion, 4th Edition (pp. 871-884.). New York, Guilford.
Zaki, J., Wager, T. D., Singer, T., Keysers, C., & Gazzola, V. (2016). The anatomy of suffering: Understanding the relationship between nociceptive and empathic pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(4), 249-259.
2015
Bartz, J. A., Lydon, J. E., Kolevzon, A., Zaki, J., Hollander, E., Ludwig, N., Bolger, N. (2015). Differential effects of oxytocin on agency and communion for anxiously and avoidantly attached individuals. Psychological Science, 26(8), 1177-1186.
Hughes, B.L., & Zaki, J. (2015). The neuroscience of motivated cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(2), 62-64.
Morelli, S. A., Lee I. A., Arnn, M. E., Zaki, J. (2015). Emotional and instrumental support provision Interact to predict well-being. Emotion, 15(4), 484-493.
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Morelli, S.A., Lieberman, M.D., & Zaki, J. (2015). The emerging study of positive empathy. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 9(2), 57-68.
Morelli, S. A., Sacchet, M. D., & Zaki, J. (2015). Common and distinct neural correlates of personal and vicarious reward: A quantitative meta-analysis. NeuroImage, 112(2015), 244-253.
Tamir, D. I., Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. P. (2015). Informing others is associated with behavioral and neural signatures of value. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(6), 1114.
Nook, E. C., Lindquist, K. A., & Zaki, J. (2015). A new look at emotion perception: Concepts speed and shape facial emotion recognition. Emotion, 15(5), 569–578.
Nook, E. C. & Zaki, J. (2015). Social norms shift behavioral and neural responses to foods. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(7), 1412-1426.
Ong, D. C., Goodman, N. D., & Zaki, J. (2015). Near-misses sting even when they are uncontrollable. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Ong, D. C., Zaki, J., & Goodman, N. D. (2015). Affective cognition: Exploring lay theories of emotion. Cognition, 143, 141-162.
Zaki, J. & Cikara, M. (2015). Addressing empathic failures. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 471-476.
2014
Zaki, J. (2014). Empathy: A motivated account. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1608-1647.
Zaki, J., Lopez, G., & Mitchell, J. (2014). Activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex covaries with revealed social preferences: Evidence for person-invariant value. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 9(4), 464-469.
Schumann, K., Zaki, J., & Dweck, C. (2014). Addressing the empathy deficit: Beliefs about the malleability of empathy predict effortful responses when empathy is challenging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107(3), 475-493.
Devlin, H. C., Zaki., J., Ong, D. C., & Gruber, J. (2014). Not as good as you think? Trait positive emotion is associated with increased self-reported empathy but decreased empathic performance. PLOS ONE, 9(10): e110470.
2013
Zaki, J. & Mitchell, J. (2013). Intuitive prosociality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(6), 466-470.
Zaki, J. & Williams, W. C. (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion. 13(5), 803-810.
Zaki, J. & Ochsner, K. (2013). Neural sources of empathy: An evolving story. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg & M. Lombardo (Eds.), Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Social Neuroscience (3rd ed., pp 214-232). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Moran, J. M., & Zaki, J. (2013). Functional neuroimaging and psychology: What have you done for me lately? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(6), 834-842.
Zaki, J. (2013). Cue integration: A common framework for physical perception and social cognition. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 296-312.
Ripoll, L. H., Zaki, J., Perez-Rodriguez, M. M., Snyder, R., Strike, K., Boussi, A., Bartz, J. A., Ochsner, K. N., Siever, L. J., New, A. S. (2013). Empathic accuracy and cognition in schizotypal personality disorder. Psychiatry Research. 210(1). 232-241.
2012
Zaki, J., Weber, J., & Ochsner, K. (2012). Task-dependent neural bases of perceiving emotionally expressive targets. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6(228), 1-11.
Zaki, J., Davis, J. I., & Ochsner, K. (2012). Overlapping activity in anterior insula during interoception and emotional experience. Neuroimage, 62(1), 493-499.
Waytz, A., Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. (2012). Response of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex predicts altruistic behavior. Journal of Neuroscience, 32, 7646-7650.
Zaki, J. & Ochsner, K. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: Progress, pitfalls, and promise. Nature Neuroscience, 15(5), 675-680.
Harvey, P. O., Zaki, J., Lee, J., Ochsner, K., & Green, M. F. (2012). Neural substrates of empathic accuracy in people with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin.
2011
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2011). On the re-integration of accuracy in social cognition research: Let us count the ways. Psychological Inquiry.
Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. (2011). Equitable decision making is associated with neural markers of subjective value. PNAS, 108(49), 19761-19766.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2011). Reintegrating accuracy into the study of social cognition (Target Article). Psychological Inquiry, 22(3), 159-182.
Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. N. (2011). Social effects of oxytocin in humans: context and person matter. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Lee, J., Zaki, J., Harvey, P. O., Ochsner, K., & Green, M. (2011). Schizophrenia patients are impaired in empathic accuracy. Psychological medicine, 41(11), 2297-2304.
Zaki, J., Schirmer, J., & Mitchell, J. (2011). Social influence modulates the neural computation of value. Psychological Science.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2011). The cognitive neuroscience of sharing and understanding others’ emotions. In J. Decety (Ed.), Empathy: From Bench to Bedside. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2011). You, me, and my brain: Self and other representations in social cognitive neuroscience. In A. Todorov, S. T. Fiske & D. Prentice (Eds.), Social neuroscience: Toward understanding the underpinnings of the social mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
2010
Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., Hollander, E., Ludwig, N. N., Kolevzon, A., et al. (2010). Oxytocin selectively improves empathic accuracy. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1426-1428.
Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Ochsner, K. N., Bolger, N., Kolevzon, A., Ludwig, N., et al. (2010). Effects of oxytocin on recollections of maternal care and closeness. PNAS, 107(50), 21371-21375.
Zaki, J., Hennigan, K., Weber, J., & Ochsner, K. N. (2010). Social cognitive conflict resolution: Contributions of domain-general and domain-specific neural systems. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(25), 8481-8488.
2009
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2009). Unpacking the informational bases of empathic accuracy. Emotion, 9(4), 478-487.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2009). The need for a cognitive neuroscience of naturalistic social cognition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 16-30.
Zaki, J., Weber, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2009). The neural bases of empathic accuracy. PNAS, 106(27), 11382-11387.
2008
Ochsner, K. N., Zaki, J., Hanelin, J., Ludlow, D. H., Knierim, K., Ramachandran, T., et al. (2008). Your pain or mine? Common and distinct neural systems supporting the perception of pain in self and others. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 3(2), 144-160.
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2008). It takes two: The interpersonal nature of empathic accuracy. Psychological Science, 19(4), 399-404.
Downey, G., Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. P. (2008). Different toolkits for different mind readers: A social-cognitive neuroscience perspective on personality and social relationships. In F. Rhodewalt (Ed.), Personality and Social Behavior. New York: Psychology Press.
2007
Zaki, J., Ochsner, K. N., Hanelin, J., Wager, T., & Mackey, S. C. (2007). Different circuits for different pain: Patterns of functional connectivity reveal distinct networks for processing pain in self and others. Social Neuroscience, 2(3 & 4), 276-291.