Gregory John Depow
A fellow at the Center for Digital Thriving, Greg is a social psychologist who studies empathy, well-being, and pro-sociality. Lately, Greg’s research has examined how people can regulate their empathy in different contexts to benefit themselves and the target of empathy, a concept he calls wise empathy.
PZ Work
Greg is a fellow at the Center for Digital Thriving where he is developing an intervention to improve the well-being of youth social media users by teaching them how to empathize with the positive and negative emotions they encounter on their feed.
Prior Work
Greg has previously published papers on how empathy is experienced in the real world, how empathy and pro-social behavior vary across the day, and across the lifespan, and how classic trait measures of empathy predict everyday state experiences of empathy. He has also examined what drives individual decisions to invest mental effort for others, and other topics including the effects of cannabis use on emotions, self-regulation, and motivation.
Current Work on Wise Empathy
Greg's dissertation was focused on wise empathy. In recent work, he found teaching individuals to share and care about the positive emotions of others improves their well-being. At the Center for Digital Thriving, he is adapting this work to help youth.
Beyond PZ
Greg received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is currently a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the UC San Diego (UCSD) Rady School of Management, as well as a fellow at the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at UCSD, and a member of Amit Goldenberg's Digital Emotions Lab at Harvard.
Where to Find Greg
You can follow Greg on LinkedIn or Bluesky. You can explore his library of articles on Google Scholar. And you can visit his website, gregdepow.com, for free versions of his published articles, links to various media coverage and appearances, and educational shinyapps Greg has developed covering Response Surface Analysis, Psychometrics, and Everyday Empathy.
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