University of Notre Dame (MA) Ruth K. Chao[1] is an American psychologist.
She is an associate professor in the Psychology Department and the principal investigator for the Multicultural Families and Adolescents Study (MFAS) research project[2] at the University of California, Riverside.
[1] This research project is funded by a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NICHD) awarded to Chao.
[2][3] In her work, Chao has argued for a reconceptualization of Diana Baumrind's identification of three parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) on the basis that the concepts of authoritative and authoritarian are ethnocentric and do not capture the essential features of parenting in Asian American families.
[1][4] She demonstrated that, although the authoritarian style predicts poor school achievement in European American children, the parenting style predicts excellent school achievement in Chinese American children.