Birgit Koopmann-Holm
Ph.D., Stanford University
German "Diplom", University of Heidelberg, Germany
The goal of my research is to understand the ways in which cultural factors (e.g., values, views of emotions, and engagement in cultural practices like meditation) shape people’s emotional lives. I am particularly interested in how views of emotions and attitudes towards crying impact (1) perceptions of and responses to others’ suffering (including racism), (2) conceptualizations of compassion, and (3) health and well-being. I use multiple methodologies and work on improving the analysis of data from frequently employed tasks (e.g., reverse correlation).
- PSYC 162: Cultural Psychology
- PSYC 160: Personality & Affective Science
- PSYC 141: Advanced Topics in Culture and Emotion
- PSYC 53: Statistics and Methods Practicum
- PSYC 53L: Statistics and Methods Lab
- PSYC 1: General Psychology 1
- PSYC 43: Research Methods in Psychology
- PSYC 117: Health Psychology
- PSYC 166: Human Neuropsychology
Co Denotes Co-First Authorship
* Denotes Student Co-Author
+ Denotes Equal Contribution
Koopmann-Holm, B., Beccari, A.*, & Oosthuizen, M.* (2024). Individual and cultural differences in compassion, noticing suffering, and well-being: Consequences of wanting to avoid feeling negative. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, e70000.
Larco, S. S.*, Romo, M. G., Garcés, M. S., & Koopmann-Holm, B. (2024). People in Ecuador and the United States conceptualize compassion differently: The role of avoided negative affect. Emotion, 24(6), 1456-1467.
Murray, K.*, & Koopmann-Holm, B. (2024). Facing discomfort: Avoided negative affect shapes the acknowledgment of systemic racism. Emotion, 24(6), 1522-1535.
Seow, J. H.*, Du, H., & Koopmann-Holm, B. (2024). What is a compassionate face? Avoided negative affect explains differences between U.S. Americans and Chinese. Cognition and Emotion. Advance online publication.
Richter, M.*, Koopmann-Holm, B., & Chen, L. (2022). Verbal labels affect holistic and analytic thinking styles in native English speakers. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 44, No. 44).
Koopmann-Holm, B., Bruchmann, K., Fuchs, M.*, & Pearson, M.* (2021). What constitutes a compassionate response? The important role of culture. Emotion, 21(8), 1610-1624.
Kevane, M.Co, & Koopmann-Holm, B.Co (2021). Improving reverse correlation analysis of faces: Diagnostics of order effects, runs, rater agreement, and image pairs. Behavior Research Methods, 53(4), 1609-1647.
Koopmann-Holm, B., Bartel, K.*+, Bin Meshar, M.*+, & Yang, H. E.*+ (2020). Seeing the whole picture? Avoided negative affect and processing of others’ suffering. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(9), 1363-1377.
Koopmann-Holm, B., Sze, J., Jinpa, T., & Tsai, J. L. (2020). Compassion meditation increases optimism towards a transgressor. Cognition and Emotion, 34(5), 1028-1035.
Bruchmann, K., Koopmann-Holm, B., & Scherer, A. (2018). Seeing beyond political affiliations: The mediating role of perceived moral foundations on the partisan similarity-liking effect. PLOS ONE, 13(8), e0202101.
Sims, T., Koopmann-Holm, B., Young, H. R., Jiang, D., Fung, H. & Tsai, J. L. (2018). Asian Americans respond less favorably to excitement (vs. calm)-focused physicians compared to European Americans. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 24(1), 1-14.
Koopmann-Holm, B. & Tsai, J. L. (2017). The cultural shaping of compassion. In E. M. Seppälä, E. Simon-Thomas, S. L. Brown, M. C. Worline, C. D. Cameron, & J. R. Doty (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of compassion science (pp. 273-285). Oxford University Press.
Koopmann-Holm, B. & O’Connor, A. J. (2017). An analysis of Alan D. Baddeley and Graham Hitch’s working memory. Routledge.
Ford, B. Q., Dmitrieva, J. O., Heller, D., Chentsova-Dutton, Y., Grossmann, I., Tamir, M., Uchida, Y., Koopmann-Holm, B., Floerke, V. A., Uhrig, M., Bokhan, T. & Mauss, I. B. (2015). Culture shapes whether the pursuit of happiness predicts higher or lower well-being. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(6), 1053-1062.
Koopmann-Holm, B. & Tsai, J. L. (2014). Focusing on the negative: Cultural differences in expressions of sympathy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(6), 1092-1115.
Sims, T., Tsai, J. L., Koopmann-Holm, B., Thomas, E. A. C., & Goldstein, M. K. (2014). Choosing a physician depends on how you want to feel: The role of ideal affect in health-related decision making. Emotion, 14(1), 187-192.
Koopmann-Holm, B., Sze, J., Ochs, C., & Tsai, J. L. (2013). Buddhist-inspired meditation increases the value of calm. Emotion, 13(3), 497-505.
Tsai, J. L., Koopmann-Holm, B., Miyazaki, M., & Ochs, C. (2013). The religious shaping of feeling: Implications of affect valuation theory. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Koopmann-Holm, B. & Matsumoto, D. (2011). Values and display rules for specific emotions. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42(3), 355-371.
Matsumoto, D., Nezlek, J. B., & Koopmann, B. (2007). Evidence for universality in phenomenological emotion response system coherence. Emotion, 7(1), 57-67.
Amelang, M., Koopmann, B., & Schmidt-Rathjens, C. (2004). Gesundheitsbezogene Konstrukte [Health-related constructs]. In K. Pawlik (Ed.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie, Themenbereich C: Theorie und Forschung, Serie VIII: Differentielle Psychologie und Persönlichkeitsforschung [Encyclopedia of psychology, subject area C: Theory and research, series VIII: Differential psychology and research in personality] (Vol. 5, pp. 619-684). Hogrefe.