Yi Zhang is currently a Behavioral Research Associate at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Link to CV.

Yi is a behavioral scientist whose work bridges social psychology, behavioral economics, consumer marketing and affective neuroscience. Some of her past work has examined the controlled and automatic aspects of impression formation in the perception of stigmatized faces (other-race faces or anomalous faces) and of consumer brands. Her work typically utilized a multi-method approach including reaction time based cognitive tasks, behavioral priming, eye tracking, neurophysiology (FMRI, and EEG) that aims at a better understanding of human motivation and the underlying mechanism.

Her most recent work looked at how repeated stimulus presentation (“mere exposure” effect) of other race faces is related to reduced negative affect rather than increased positive affect from the neural perspective, and how the neural signature of consumer implicit self-identification with brand is distinct from brand preference.

Yi received her B.S. in Biological Science from Peking University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from Brandeis University. Prior to joining Darden, Yi worked as a Behavioral Scientist and Director of Consumer Subconscious Research lab at Sentient Decision Science, Inc, a market research firm based in Portsmouth, NH., serving a variety of clients in the consumer package goods and telecommunication industries.