James A. Coan

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

Selected publications

• Partner intimate touch is associated with increased interpersonal closeness, especially in non-romantic partners

  PLoS ONE · 2021 · 17 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Relationship closeness promotes desirable health outcomes. Most interventions to increase relationship closeness are verbal, which may not suit all couples. We consider whether Orgasmic Meditation (OM), a structured, partnered, largely non-verbal practice that includes genital touch, also increases relationship closeness. We hypothesized that OM would increase feelings of closeness for both romantic and non-romantic partners. This is important, because intimate touch with non-romantic partners i…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toward Minimum Startle After Take-Over Request: A Preliminary Study of Physiological Data

  2020 · 14 citations

  In this work, we introduce the preliminary analysis of driver’s physiological data after receiving take-over request (TOR). Studies have shown that physiological measurements on drivers may provide better insights into the cognitive behavior and performance of drivers. Our goal is to examine the effect of two common TOR modalities (visual-auditory and generic auditory), in the limited take-over time budget, on psychophysical states and take-over behavior of the drivers. We applied multimodal phy…

  PublisherDOI

• Groups as organisms: Implications for therapy and training

  Clinical Psychology Review · 2021 · 13 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>OXTR</i> DNA methylation moderates the developmental calibration of neural reward sensitivity

  Developmental Psychobiology · 2020 · 12 citations

  The Adaptive Calibration Model of Stress Responsivity (ACM) suggests that developmental experiences predictably tune biological systems to meet the demands of the environment. Particularly important is the calibration of reward systems. Using a longitudinal sample (N = 184) followed since adolescence, this study models the dimensions of early life stress and their effects on epigenetic modification of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and individual differences in neural response to reward antic…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Beyond Nature Versus Nurture: the Emergence of Emotion

  Affective Science · 2023-08-30 · 11 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

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…

Similar researchers at University of Virginia

• Eric Turkheimerh-62
• Tobias Grossmannh-59