Professional Biography

Dr. Chen is a professor at Penn GSE. He conducts research on socioemotional development in childhood and adolescence. He has received a Scholars Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD), and several other awards for his scientific work. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA, Div. 7), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He served as the president of ISSBD. He has served as an associate editor of Child Development and on the editorial boards of leading journals in the field.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Chen’s research focuses on children’s and adolescents’ socioemotional functioning and its role in social, school, and psychological adjustment from a contextual-developmental perspective. He is interested in the developmental processes of social competence, shyness-inhibition, and aggression as well as the dispositional/biological and socialization factors that are involved in these processes. He has conducted, in collaboration with his colleagues, a series of longitudinal projects in Chinese, North American, and other societies. The projects are based largely on a theoretical framework he has developed about the links between cultural values and two fundamental systems of socioemotional functioning—namely, social initiative and self-control. The projects are concerned with (1) the joint and interactive contributions of early temperamental characteristics and parenting practices to individual development in social, economic, and cultural contexts, and (2) the role of social interactions and relationships in mediating and moderating contextual influences on development. His recent work has tapped the implications of macro-level societal changes for human development. In addition, his team has conducted studies of adjustment experiences, including the difficulties and strengths, of different generations of Asian children and adolescents in North America.

Selected Publications

Journal Editorial Boards

Child Development
Associate Editor