Christopher Oveis

Christopher Oveis is a social/personality psychologist who studies how positive emotions, empathy, and emotion regulation promote social connection and high performance. He teaches the Core MBA Leadership courses at the Rady School, and has received the Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2019, he was named one of the best 40 Under 40 business school professors by Poets & Quants.

Professor Oveis' recent work has produced insights into (1) how efforts to manage one’s own stress responses contagiously impact teammates and teamwork; (2) how expressing gratitude impacts teams and builds the social fabric of groups; (3) how compassion shapes honesty versus dishonesty when providing performance feedback; and (4) how the way a person laughs signals their social status to others. His work has been published in the top journals of the field. He is an associate editor for the journal Emotion and has served on the editorial boards of Affective Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Prior to joining the Rady School, Professor Oveis completed postdoctoral fellowships in Harvard University’s Department of Psychology and Kennedy School of Government, and received the Harvard University Bok Award for Excellence in Teaching. He earned his Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. with Highest Distinction in Psychology at the University of Virginia.

Selected Publications

Gu, Y., Ocampo, J. M., Algoe, S. B., & Oveis, C. (in press). Gratitude expressions improve teammates’ cardiovascular stress responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Oveis, C., Gu, Y., Ocampo, J. M., Hangen, E. J., & Jamieson, J. P. (2020). Emotion regulation contagion: Stress reappraisal promotes challenge responses in teammates. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(11), 2187-2205.

Lupoli, M. J., Zhang, M., Yin, Y., & Oveis, C. (2020). A conflict of values: When perceived compassion decreases trust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 91, 1-13.

Algoe, S. B., Dwyer, P. C., Younge, A., & Oveis, C. (2020). A new perspective on the social functions of emotions: Gratitude and the witnessing effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(1), 40-74.   

Lupoli, M. J., Jampol, L., & Oveis, C. (2017). Lying because we care: Compassion increases prosocial lying. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146, 1026-1042.

Shiota, M. N., Campos, B. C., Oveis, C., Hertenstein, M. J., Simon-Thomas, E., & Keltner, D. (2017). Beyond happiness: Building a science of discrete positive emotions. American Psychologist, 72, 617-643.

Oveis, C., Spectre, A., Smith, P. K., Liu, M. Y., & Keltner, D. (2016). Laughter conveys status. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 65, 109-115.

Stellar, J. E., Cohen, A. B., Oveis, C., & Keltner, D. (2015). Affective and physiological responses to the suffering of others: Compassion and vagal activity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 572-585.

*Kogan, A., *Oveis, C., Carr, E. W., Gruber, J., Mauss, I. B., Shallcross, A., Impett, E. A., van der Löwe, I., Hui, B., Cheng, C., & Keltner, D. (2014). Vagal activity is quadratically related to prosocial traits, prosocial emotions, and observer perceptions of prosociality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 1051-1063.

Kouchaki, M., Oveis, C., & Gino, F. (2014). Guilt enhances the sense of control and drives risky judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 2103-2110.

Carr, E. W., Winkielman, P., & Oveis, C. (2014). Transforming the mirror: Power fundamentally changes facial responding to emotional expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 997-1003.

Sherman, G. D., Lee, J. J., Cuddy, A. J. C., Renshon, J., Oveis, C., Gross, J. J., & Lerner, J. S. (2012). Leadership is associated with lower levels of stress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 17903-17907. 

Oveis, C., Horberg, E. J., & Keltner, D. (2010). Compassion, pride, and social intuitions of self-other similarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 618-630.

Oveis, C., Cohen, A. B., Gruber, J., Shiota, M. N., Haidt, J., & Keltner, D. (2009). Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia is associated with tonic positive emotionality. Emotion, 9, 265-270.

Van Kleef, G. A., Oveis, C., van der Löwe, I., LuoKogan, A., Goetz, J., & Keltner, D. (2008). Power, distress, and compassion: Turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. Psychological Science, 19, 1315-1322.

• Positive Emotions
• Empathy and Compassion
• Social Connection
• Emotion Regulation
• Optimizing Stress Responses