Rate My Professor Kateri McRae

Kateri McRae is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Denver. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Arizona in 2007, an M.A. in Psychology from the same institution in 2004, and a B.A. in Human Biology and Drama from Stanford University in 2002. McRae directs the Automaticity, Affect, Control & Thought (AACT) Lab, an affective neuroscience laboratory that employs behavioral and brain-based methods to explore psychological questions about emotion, cognition, and their interactions. Her research examines the relationship between emotion and cognition, with a particular focus on emotion regulation, the cognitive generation of emotion, emotional awareness, and the ways in which attention, thought, and memory both change and are changed by emotion. Key projects include CAREER: The Effects of Process Facilitation on Emotion Regulation, Investigating the neural systems that support the beneficial effects of positive emotion on stress regulation, and participation in the Reproducibility Project: Psychology.

In her career, McRae has held prominent leadership roles, including president of the Society for Social and Affective Neuroscience, Director of Faculty Advising at the University of Denver, associate editor at the APA journal Emotion, and Curriculum Coordinator for the Department of Psychology. She currently serves as the 4D Faculty Fellow for Well-Being at DU. McRae teaches graduate seminars in affective neuroscience and fMRI methods, as well as undergraduate courses such as the first-year seminar 'Exploring Psychology Through Theater' and the community-engaged seminar 'Emotion Regulation' for junior and senior psychology students. Her honors include Fellowship in the Association for Psychological Science, Faculty Adviser of the Year in Academic Advising, Preregistration Challenge Prize from the Center for Open Science, Paper of the Year from Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Notable publications include 'Emotion Regulation' (McRae & Gross, 2020, Emotion), 'Case study: A quantitative report of early attention, fear, disgust, and avoidance in specific phobia for buttons' (McRae et al., 2022, Cognitive and Behavioral Practice), 'Transformative Experience and Moral Expansion at Secular Mass Gatherings' (Yudkin et al., 2022, Nature Communications), 'Cognitive emotion regulation: a review of theory and scientific findings' (McRae, 2016), and 'Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal' (McRae et al., 2008, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations).