Dr. Jeanne Tsai is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab. Her research examines how culture shapes affective processes (emotions, moods, feelings) and the implications that cultural and individual differences in these processes have for what decisions people make, how they think about health and illness, how they express themselves, and how they perceive and respond to others in an increasingly multicultural world.

Education

She earned a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Stanford University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996.

Research Contributions

Affect Valuation Theory (AVT)

Dr. Jeanne Tsai formulated Affect Valuation Theory (AVT) in the early 2000s. AVT addresses the question of how cultural ideas and practices shape emotion. AVT has three main premises: 1) how people actually feel (“actual affect”) differs from how they ideally want to feel (“ideal affect”); 2) cultural factors shape ideal affect more than actual affect; and 3) people try to reduce the discrepancy between their actual and ideal affect by engaging in specific mood-producing behaviors that help them achieve their ideal affect.

Affect Valuation Index (AVI)

Affect Valuation Index (AVI) was developed in 2001 by Dr. Jeanne Tsai and Dr. Brian Knutson to distinguish between ideal affect and actual affect. The measure of actual affect asks respondents to use a 5-point rating scale (1 =not at all and 5 = an extreme amount) to indicate how much they actually feel a number of states on average (other time frames can be used, such as “over the course of a typical week” “right now”). The measure of ideal affect asks respondents to use the same rating scale to indicate how much they ideally want to feel the same states on average (other time frames can be used, such as “over the course of a typical week” “right now”).

General Ethnicity Questionnaire (GEQ)

The General Ethnicity Questionnaire (GEQ) is a measure of cultural orientation that can be used with individuals of different cultural backgrounds by changing the reference culture. The GEQ was adapted from four different pre-existing and commonly used measures of acculturation, the Cultural Life Styles Inventory (Mendoza, 1989), the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans (Cuellar, Harris, & Jasso, 1980), the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Rating Scale (Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987), and the Behavioral Acculturation Scale (Szapocznik, Scopetta, Kurtines, & De Los Angeles Aranade, 1978).

There are two versions of the General Ethnicity Questionnaire: one "original" version and one "abridged" version. The "original" version includes: (1) a question asking participants what their "culture" means to them, and (2) 75 multiple-choice questions that ask about participants' language use, social affiliation, engagement in cultural practices, and cultural identification. The American version of the questionnaire includes several additional items that assess what "being American" means to respondents. The "abridged" version was developed in collaboration with Dr. Yu-Wen Ying and Dr. Peter A. Lee for use with Chinese Americans. The "abridged" version includes 37 items (a subset of the original 75 multiple choice questions), plus one item that asks participants whether or not they are bilingual. To date, most studies that have used the GEQ have used the abridged version. Therefore, only the abridged version is available for use at this time.