About

James A. Coan is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and the Director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. His recent work emphasizes the neural systems supporting social forms of emotion regulation. He has received notable awards including the inaugural Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science in 2010, and the Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research. His research involves understanding the neural mechanisms underlying social and emotional processes, with a focus on how social relationships influence neural threat responding and emotion regulation. Coan has contributed to the field through various publications, including edited volumes and chapters on emotion elicitation, social neuroscience, and the neural basis of social relationships.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Computer Security
• Medicine
• Clinical psychology
• Audiology
• Psychoanalysis
• Speech recognition
• Epistemology
• Human–computer interaction
• Genetics

Selected publications

• Adolescent empathy predicts reduced neural responses to social rejection in adulthood

  Development and Psychopathology · 2026-03-04 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Objective: Adolescence is a sensitive period for social and neural development. Empathic growth during adolescence has been linked to improved prosocial behavior in adulthood. This study examined how adolescent empathy relates to adulthood neural responses to rejection. Method: Participants ( N = 77; 42 females, 52% White) were drawn from a demographically diverse community sample and assessed annually from ages 13 to 21. Each year, participants’ empathic support provision toward a close friend was evaluated during an observationally coded support task. At approximately age 24, participants completed the Cyberball social exclusion paradigm while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results: Whole-brain exploratory analyses revealed that greater empathic support provision during adolescence was associated with reduced activation in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC) during social exclusion in early adulthood (Cohen’s d = 0.12), suggesting a contribution of empathy provision to rejection-related neural responses later in life. The effect was not driven by felt distress during social exclusion, indicating that adolescent empathic support provision is potentially associated with neural responses to social exclusion independent of subjective distress. Conclusion: These findings underscore the long-term links of empathy to adult social processes and may inform interventions aimed at enhancing interpersonal functioning and resilience.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Adolescent empathy predicts reduced neural responses to social rejection in adulthood – CORRIGENDUM

  Development and Psychopathology · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Does attachment in adolescence predict neural responses to handholding in adulthood? A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

  Journal of Social and Personal Relationships · 2024-03-21 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Objective: Early life experiences, including attachment-related experiences, inform internal working models that guide adult relationship behaviors. Few studies have examined the association between adolescent attachment and adult relationship behavior on a neural level. The current study examined attachment in adolescence and its associations with neural correlates of relationship behaviors in adulthood. Method: 85 participants completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) at age 14. Ten years later, at age 24, participants underwent functional brain image when participants were under the threat of electric shock alone, holding the hand of a stranger, or their partner. Results: We found that adolescents who were securely attached at age 14 showed increased activation in regions commonly associated with cognitive, affective, and reward processing when they held the hand of their partner and stranger compared to being alone. Adolescents with higher preoccupied attachment scores showed decreased activation in similar regions only during the stranger handholding condition compared to being alone. Conclusions: These findings suggest that adolescent attachment predicts adult social relationship behaviors on a neural level, in regions largely consistent with previous literature. Broadly, this study has implications for understanding long-term links between attachment and adult relationship behaviors and has potential for informing intervention.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Motivation and Pleasure Deficits Undermine the Benefits of Social Affiliation in Psychosis

  Clinical Psychological Science · 2024-02-19 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  In psychotic disorders, motivation and pleasure (MAP) deficits are associated with decreased affiliation and heightened functional impairment. We leveraged a transdiagnostic sample enriched for psychosis and a multi-method approach to test the hypothesis that MAP deficits undermine the stress-buffering benefits of affiliation. Participants completed the Social Affiliation Enhancement Task (SAET) to cultivate affiliation with an experimental partner. Although the SAET increased perceived affiliation and mood, individuals with greater negative symptoms derived smaller emotional benefits from the partners, as indexed by self-report and facial behavior. We then used the Handholding fMRI paradigm, which combines threat-anticipation with affiliative physical contact, to determine whether MAP deficits undermine the social regulation of distress. Individuals with greater MAP deficits showed diminished neural 'benefits'-reduced dampening of threat-elicited activation-from affiliative touch in key frontoparietal nodes of the Dorsal Attention Network. In short, MAP symptoms disrupt the emotional and neuroregulatory benefits of affiliation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The role of perceived negative partner behavior in daily snacking behavior: A dynamical systems approach

  Appetite · 2024-05-04 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Past work suggested that psychological stress, especially in the context of relationship stress, is associated with increased consumption of energy-dense food and when maintained for long periods of time, leads to adverse health consequences. Furthermore, this association is moderated by a variety of factors, including emotional over-eating style. That being said, few work utilized a dynamical system approach to understand the intraindividual and interindividual fluctuations within this process. The current study utilized a 14-day daily diary study, collected between January-March 2020, where participants reported their partner's negative relationship behavior and their own snacking behavior. A differential equation model was applied to the daily dairy data collected. Results showed that snacking behavior followed an undamped oscillator model while negative relationship behavior followed a damped coupled oscillator model. In other words, snacking behavior fluctuated around an equilibrium but was not coupled within dyadic partners. Negative relationship behavior fluctuated around an equilibrium and was amplified over time, coupled within dyadic partners. Furthermore, we found a two-fold association between negative relationship behavior and snacking: while the association between the displacement of negative relationship behavior and snacking was negative, change in negative relationship behavior and snacking were aligned. Thus, at any given time, one's snacking depends both on the amount of negative relationship behaviors one perceives and the dynamical state a dyad is engaging in (i.e., whether the negative relationship behavior is "exacerbating" or "resolving"). This former association was moderated by emotional over-eating style and the latter association was not. The current findings highlight the importance of examining dynamics within dyadic system and offers empirical and methodological insights for research in adult relationships.

  PublisherDOI

• Emotional engagement with close friends in adolescence predicts neural correlates of empathy in adulthood

  Social Neuroscience · 2024-07-03

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  temporal pole activity (a region associated with cognitive empathy and perspective taking) while observing threats directed at others. Results have implications for understanding the neurodevelopmental roots of empathy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Beyond nature versus nurture: The emergence of emotion

  2023-09-12

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Affective science is stuck in a version of the nature-versus-nurture debate, with theorists arguing whether emotions are evolved adaptations or psychological constructions. We do not see these as mutually exclusive options. Many adaptive behaviors that humans have evolved to be good at, such as walking, emerge during development–not according to a genetically dictated program, but through interactions between the affordances of the body, brain, and environment. We suggest emotions are the same. As developing humans acquire increasingly complex goals and learn optimal strategies for pursuing those goals, they are inevitably pulled to particular brain-body-behavior states that maximize outcomes and self-reinforce via positive feedback loops. We call these recurring, self-organized states emotions. Emotions display many of the hallmark features of self-organized attractor states, such as hysteresis (prior events influence the current state), degeneracy (many configurations of the underlying variables can produce the same global state), and stability. Because most bodily, neural, and environmental affordances are shared by all humans–we all have cardiovascular systems, cerebral cortices, and caregivers who raised us–similar emotion states emerge in all of us. This perspective helps reconcile ideas that, at first glance, seem contradictory, such as emotion universality and neural degeneracy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Emotional Engagement with Close Friends in Adolescence Predicts Neural Correlates of Empathy in Adulthood

  2023-10-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Empathy requires the ability to understand another’s point of view and is critical for motivating a person to help others. However, little is known about the link between experiences of empathic emotional engagement in close friendships during adolescence and neural correlates of empathy in adulthood. From 1998 – 2006, N = 88 participants drawn from a demographically diverse community sample were observed from ages 13 to 21 and rated on the amount of emotional engagement displayed towards a close friend during a support task. Around 2008 and at approximately age 24, participants underwent functional brain imaging while a partner or stranger was under distress. Contrary to predictions, greater emotional engagement with close friends during adolescence was prospectively linked with neural correlates of reduced temporal pole activity (a region associated with cognitive empathy and perspective taking) toward unfamiliar others in adulthood. Results have implications for understanding the neurodevelopmental roots of empathy.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Regulation of the Neural Threat Response Predicts Subsequent Markers of Physical Health

  Psychosomatic Medicine · 2023-08-02 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: Social support has been linked to a vast range of beneficial health outcomes. However, the physiological mechanisms of social support are not well characterized. Drawing on functional magnetic resonance imaging and health-related outcome data, this study aimed to understand how neural measures of "yielding"-the reduction of brain activity during social support-moderate the link between social support and health. METHODS: We used a data set where 78 participants around the age of 24 years were exposed to the threat of shock when holding the hand of a partner. At ages 28 to 30 years, participants returned for a health visit where inflammatory activity and heart rate variability were recorded. RESULTS: Findings showed a significant interaction between dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-related yielding and perceived social support on C-reactive protein levels ( β = -0.95, SE = 0.42, z = -2.24, p = .025, 95% confidence interval = -1.77 to -0.12). We also found a significant interaction between hypothalamus-related yielding and perceived social support on baseline heart rate variability ( β = 0.51, SE = 0.23, z = 2.19, p = .028, 95% confidence interval = 0.05 to 0.97). CONCLUSIONS: Greater perceived social support was associated with lower C-reactive protein levels and greater baseline heart rate variability among individuals who were more likely to yield to social support in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and hypothalamus years earlier. The current study highlights the construct of yielding in the link between social support and physical health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social Regulation of the Neural Threat Response Predicts Subsequent Markers of Physical Health

  2023-06-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Objective: Social support has been linked to a vast range of beneficial health outcomes. However, the physiological mechanisms of social support are not well characterized. Drawing on fMRI and health-related outcome data, this study aimed to understand how neural measures of “yielding” – the reduction of brain activity during social support – moderates the link between social support and health. Methods: We employed a dataset where seventy-eight participants around the age of 24 were exposed to the threat of shock when holding the hand of a partner. At age 28 – 30, participants returned for a health visit where inflammatory activity and heart rate variability were recorded. Results: Findings showed a significant interaction between dACC-related yielding and perceived social support on C-reactive protein levels (β = -0.95, se = 0.42, z = -2.24, p = 0.025, 95% CI [-1.77, -0.12]). We also found a significant interaction between hypothalamus-related yielding and perceived social support on baseline heart rate variability (β = 0.51, se = 0.23, z = 2.19, p = 0.028, 95% CI [0.05, 0.97]). Conclusions: Greater perceived social support was associated with lower CRP levels and greater baseline heart rate variability among individuals who were more likely to yield to social support in the dACC and hypothalamus years earlier. The current study highlights the construct of yielding in the link between social support and physical health.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Neural Mechanisms of Social Emotion Regulation

  NIH · $1.3M · 2009–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Joseph P. Allen

  University of Virginia

  65 shared

• Lane Beckes

  Bradley University

  43 shared

• Jingrun Lin

  University of Virginia

  43 shared

• Nauder Namaky

  Providence College

  38 shared

• Meghan A. Costello

  University of Virginia

  37 shared

• Bert N. Uchino

  37 shared

• Siegwart Lindenberg

  21 shared

• John J. B. Allen

  University of Arizona

  20 shared

Education

• Post Doctoral Fellow, Psychology

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2005

• PhD, Psychology

  University of Arizona

  2003

Awards & honors

• Inaugural Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early…
• Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological…