Boucher did his undergraduate work in psychology at San Francisco State University, and graduate work in psycholinguistics at the University of Illinois. He took his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. He then became an Assistant Research Psychologist in the Department of International Health at UCSF. While on the UCSF staff he was seconded to the Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for two years, where he studied the verbal and nonverbal emotional behavior of Malays and Temuan Aborigines. For sixteen years he was a member of the academic staff of the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, where he headed a team of researchers in ten countries studying the language and behavior of emotion. He was member of the affiliate graduate faculty in the departments of communication and psychology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He served as Visiting Professor of Psychology at Western Washington University, and Adjunct Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona. At present he teaches courses in Cross-Cultural Psychology, Emotion, Interviewing and History of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of San Francisco.