Birgit Koopmann-Holm

Associate Professor

Educational Background

Ph.D., Stanford University

German "Diplom", University of Heidelberg, Germany

Research

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).

Courses

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

Publications

^Co Denotes Co-First Authorship
* Denotes Student Co-Author
⁺ Denotes Equal Contribution

Murray, K.*, & Koopmann-Holm, B. (2024). Facing discomfort: Avoided negative affect shapes the acknowledgment of systemic racism. Emotion. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0001364

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. Advance online publication.https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0001356

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). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/255154gt

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001007

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. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01499-w

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. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220903905

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. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1703648

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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202101

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000171

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. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190464684.001.0001

Koopmann-Holm, B. & O’Connor, A. J. (2017). An analysis of Alan D. Baddeley and Graham Hitch’s working memory. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781912282418

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000108

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037684

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034372

Koopmann-Holm, B., Sze, J., Ochs, C., & Tsai, J. L. (2013). Buddhist-inspired meditation increases the value of calm. Emotion, 13(3), 497-505. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031070

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. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022110362753

Matsumoto, D., Nezlek, J. B., & Koopmann, B. (2007). Evidence for universality in phenomenological emotion response system coherence. Emotion, 7(1), 57-67. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.1.57

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.