About

Dr. Niobe Way is an internationally recognized developmental psychologist and a professor at New York University (NYU) with nearly 40 years of empirical research focused on teenagers, particularly boys and young men from diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Her work centers on social and emotional development and explores how cultural ideologies shape child development. Dr. Way is a leading expert on topics such as friendships, loneliness, gender stereotypes, masculinity, and the roots of violence. She is the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH), co-founder of agapi.teens, and the principal investigator on the Listening with Curiosity Project. She has served as President of the Society for Research on Adolescence and holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, a doctoral degree from Harvard, and completed an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship at Yale in the psychology department. In her pioneering book, REBELS WITH A CAUSE: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture (Dutton, 2024), Dr. Way draws on her extensive research and the voices of boys and young men to reveal a cultural crisis of connection that underlies rising rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicide, and mass violence among young men. She argues that this crisis stems from a culture that values toughness over vulnerability, logic over feeling, and individualism over community, which she terms "boy" culture—a caricature that harms boys and society alike. Dr. Way advocates for a cultural shift that values both the "hard" and "soft" aspects of humanity equally, emphasizing the importance of friendship, empathy, and curiosity as essential to human thriving. Her work offers solutions for schools, workplaces, and families to foster connection and responsibility, challenging harmful stereotypes and promoting a more humane and connected society.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Gender studies
• Political Science
• Social Science
• History
• Ecology
• Environmental ethics
• Law
• Psychotherapist

Selected publications

• Sensitive mothers, divergent paths: Differential outcomes for early sensitive caregiving amongst Chinese adolescent boys and girls

  Child Development · 2026-03-18

  article

  Evidence of the long-term benefits of early sensitive caregiving is scarce in non-Western samples. This 14-year longitudinal study from urban China (N = 344; 47.97% females) investigated the association between maternal sensitivity observed at age 14 and 24 months and adolescents' internalizing problems at age 15 years. Findings revealed gender-specific patterns: among adolescent girls, early maternal sensitivity was associated with fewer internalizing problems (βs = -0.36 to -0.40) after accounting for their concurrent perceived support. However, for boys, early maternal sensitivity was indirectly associated with higher depression and social anxiety through lower perceived support from teachers and parents. These gender--divergent trajectories highlight that early caregiving experiences may have distinct mental health implications across developmental stages and cultural contexts.

  PublisherDOI

• The Questions Young Adults Want to Be Asked: A New Perspective on Interpersonal Curiosity in Relationships

  Youth · 2026-02-11

  articleOpen access

  Though an emerging body of theory and research suggests that individuals who feel and express greater interpersonal curiosity experience improved social functioning and relationships, researchers have yet to examine interpersonal curiosity from the perspective of those receiving questions from others. The present study employs a mixed-methods approach to explore the questions young adults wish to be asked by four relational partners (i.e., closest friend, mother figure, father figure, and romantic partner), along with their reasons why. Among our sample of college students (N = 641; Mage = 19.82), eight distinct types of questions (e.g., about one’s well-being), along with six themes in their reasons for wishing to receive this curiosity (e.g., to improve relational dynamics), were identified. Findings not only suggest that young adults have questions they wish to be asked but also offer insight into six potential mechanisms by which they believe interpersonal curiosity could enhance their relationships.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Listening with Curiosity Project: A new approach to SEL

  Social and Emotional Learning Research Practice and Policy · 2026-02-20

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  This study presents the results of an observational pre-post intervention assessment of The Listening with Curiosity Project , a 26-lesson curriculum designed to foster listening skills and interpersonal curiosity among middle school students. The assessment involved 494 seventh-grade students (50% female-identifying) from New York City public schools, with an average age of 12.13 years, and diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds (36% Asian/Asian American, 13% Black/African American, 32% Latino/a/x, 14% White, and 5% Other Race (i.e., race/ethnicity not listed). Findings from structural equation modeling indicated that improved listening and interpersonal curiosity were associated with greater connection to others, including increased perceived common humanity, and students who felt more connected to others showed heightened academic engagement. Additionally, the multi-group analysis revealed several gender differences. Implications for SEL practice are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Urban Chinese Adolescents’ Perspectives on Gender Roles and Differential Treatment: The Significance of Teachers and Schools

  Chinese Education & Society · 2025-07-28 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Parenting in Changing Social and Economic Contexts in Asian Societies

  2025-02-05

  book-chapterSenior author

  As Asia has undergone remarkably rapid social change in the past half century primarily as a result of globalization and economic development, behavioral science scholars have documented significant shifts in how parents in Asia raise their children. In this chapter, we offer broad overviews of major social and economic changes in Asia (especially East Asia) and review broad theories that connect social changes to parenting. We then review the literature on social change and parenting from South Korea, Singapore, and China, which have been the most robust sites for this scholarship, followed by a more in-depth examination of the nature of parental changes in attitudes about social connectedness and individual autonomy using our longitudinal and mixed method data from Nanjing, China. We conclude with practice and policy implications.

  PublisherDOI

• Maternal Sensitivity Predicts Child Attachment in a Non-Western Context: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study of Chinese Families

  Child Development · 2025-05-14 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Despite the long-standing debate over the assumed universality of maternal sensitivity predicting attachment security (i.e., sensitivity hypothesis), few long-term longitudinal investigations on attachment have been conducted outside the Western context. We leveraged data from a prospective 9-year longitudinal study of middle-class families (N = 356; female = 48.9%) in China to examine if early maternal sensitivity predicts attachment representations in middle childhood. Maternal sensitivity was assessed from lab-based observed interactions at 14 and 24 months. At 10 years old, children completed the Chinese version of the Attachment Script Assessment. Maternal sensitivity positively predicted the child's attachment representations at age 10 years (β = 0.20, p < 0.01). These results supported the view that maternal sensitivity is prospectively related to secure attachment across cultures.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Associations between hegemonic masculine norms and academic outcomes among youth in China and the United States

  Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology · 2025-05-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Maternal and paternal emotion socialization practices and psychosocial adjustment from early- to mid-adolescence among urban Chinese families.

  Developmental Psychology · 2025-12-04 · 1 citations

  article

  = 0.22) and their parents (247 mothers and 191 fathers) participated in the sixth wave of data collection when children were 10 years old (Year 10). Majority of them continued to participate 5 years later for the seventh wave of data collection (Year 15). Both mothers and fathers reported on their ES practices, and adolescents reported on their psychosocial adjustment outcomes at both waves. To examine how maternal and paternal ES were uniquely linked to adolescent psychosocial outcomes concurrently and across time, a series of multiple regression models were tested. Results showed that concurrently, maternal supportive ES (i.e., emotion encouragement, emotion talk or sharing, and emotion teaching) was positively linked to girls' self-esteem at Year 10, whereas paternal ES was inversely associated with boys' depressive symptoms at Year 15. Longitudinally, maternal supportive ES practices were uniquely related to girls' increases in self-esteem and decreases in depressive symptoms for all adolescents. Our findings suggest long-lasting associations between parental ES practices and adolescent psychological adjustment and unique roles of maternal and paternal ES in adolescent girls' and boys' development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Starting from a Different Place: The Five Truths Evident in Carol Gilligan's Research

  Harvard Educational Review · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Niobe Way; Starting from a Different Place: The Five Truths Evident in Carol Gilligan's Research. Harvard Educational Review 1 March 2024; 94 (1): 136–140. doi: https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-94.1.136 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

  PublisherDOI

• Interpersonal Curiosity: A Missing Construct in the Field of Human Development

  Human Development · 2024-10-21 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Children demonstrate a remarkable capacity for both intellectual and interpersonal curiosity, reflecting their desires to know about the physical, material, and natural world and about the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of other people. Yet the study of curiosity and its educational applications have focused almost exclusively on the former, even though interpersonal curiosity may be critical for social-emotional learning, human connection, and the capacity to understand and take the perspective of others. In this article, we review the research on intellectual and interpersonal curiosity, focusing on the latter and including our own research that indicates that it is associated with social-emotional wellbeing, academic engagement, and a sense of common humanity. We also review research on how ecological contexts (e.g., of families and schools) shape curiosity, how contextual variation may lead to individual variation (i.e., by gender and age), and offer directions for future research.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Diane Hughes

  New York University

  33 shared

• Xinyin Chen

  University of Pennsylvania

  32 shared

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa

  31 shared

• Huihua Deng

  Southeast University

  13 shared

• Leoandra Onnie Rogers

  11 shared

• Zuhong Lu

  Wuxi Fourth People's Hospital

  10 shared

• Vanessa L. Fong

  Amherst College

  9 shared

• Guangzhen Zhang

  Southeast University

  8 shared

Labs

• Science of Human Connection LabPI

Awards & honors

• President of the Society for Research on Adolescence
• The Grand Prix Award at Cannes Film Festival for the movie i…
• Oscar nomination for best foreign film for the movie inspire…