For their dissertation “Essays on Emotion and Decision Making, with Implications for Policy” that was completed at Harvard University under the mentoring of Professors Jennifer Lerner, Amit Goldenberg, and James Gross.

Ke is a postdoctoral fellow at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy with a focus on Management, Leadership, and Decision Science from Harvard University, a Master’s in Psychology from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Wuhan University.

His research consists of two streams. In the first stream, he studies how we navigate and shape emotions-our own and others’-to make wiser decisions and foster well-being. In the second stream, he explores how we navigate and shape communication around diversity, equity, and inclusion to create more supportive workplaces. He has published research in leading journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Affective Science.

His doctoral dissertation deepens our understanding of the role specific positive emotions play in decision-making and the long-term impact of emotion regulation. The first chapter, based on five studies, found that gratitude, unlike other positive emotions, reduced tobacco use-a major preventable cause of death. The second chapter, with two studies, revealed that gratitude could increase cheating when it benefits others. The final chapter, which included two studies, showed that a brief, low-cost online reappraisal intervention achieved sustained benefits six months later. Together, the studies extended classic conceptions about appraisal processes to contemporary theories of affective science and decision-making in health, moral, and organizational contexts. The findings hold substantial policy implications for enhancing life expectancy, curbing dishonesty, and fostering workforce well-being.

Derek M. Isaacowitz is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Lifespan Lab at Washington University in St Louis. He joined the WashU faculty after serving on the Psychology faculty at Brandeis and at Northeastern. He was an undergraduate student at Stanford University, and received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. His research on emotion regulation and social perception in the context of adult development and aging has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, and Velux Stiftung. This research has appeared in journals such as Psychological Science, Social and Psychological and Personality Science, Emotion, and Affective Science. He was editor-in-chief of the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences until the end of 2023 and in 2024 became a senior editor at Psychological Science. He previously served as chair of the Social Psychology, Personality and Interpersonal Processes study section at NIH. He has been the recipient of the Springer Early Career Achievement Award from Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging) of the American Psychological Association, the Margret M. and Paul B. Baltes Foundation Award in Behavioral and Social Gerontology, for Outstanding Early Career Contributions, from the Gerontological Society of America, as well as teaching and mentoring awards.