PhD Student @ Columbia [social vision, fmri, representation]

Research

I am a 4th year PhD student working with Jon Freeman at Columbia University.

Other people are complex and dynamic. When you interact with another person, many pieces of information, from their expressions, body, and voice, are seamlessly integrated and processed as you form an impression of this person. How do we extract and organize useful information about others?

My research uses behavioral experiments, neuroimaging studies, and computational modeling to investigate how perceivers encode, represent, and integrate information extracted from our social environments.

Publications

  • Chwe, J.A. & Freeman, J.B. (in press, Social Psychological and Personality Science). Trustworthiness of Crowds is Gleaned in Half a Second. PDF Blog

  • Freeman, J.B. & Chwe, J.A. (in press). Social categorization: Looking towards the future. In D. Carlston, K.L. Johnson, & K. Hugenberg (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Social Cognition, 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press. PDF

  • Schwyck, M. E., Du, M., Natarajan, P., Chwe, J. A., & Parkinson, C. (2023). Neural encoding of novel social networks: evidence that perceivers prioritize others’ centrality. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 18(1) PDF

  • Hyon, R., Chavez, R. S., Chwe, J. A., Wheatley, T., Kleinbaum, A. M., & Parkinson, C. (2022). White matter connectivity in brain systems supporting social and affective processing predicts real-world social network characteristics. Communications Biology. PDF

In Preparation

  • Chwe, J.A., Vartiainen, H., & Freeman, J.B. (under review). Multidimensional Neural Representation of Face Impressions

  • Chwe J.A., Lick, D.J, & Freeman, J.B. (revision in process). The Real-Time Dynamics of Multiracial Categorizations

Projects Ongoing

  • Dynamic of Impression Formation Using Natural Language

    Traditional studies of impression formation generally use paradigms that deviate from real-world impression formation in two critical ways: 1) studies use static photos rather than dynamic stimuli (i.e. videos), and 2) rely on numerical ratings of experimenter-determined constructs of interest (i.e. “Rate this person on trustworthiness”, 1-7). We develop a novel, data-driven paradigm that uses natural language responses elicited by dynamic, evocative videos to study impression formation. Paradigm code Analysis code

  • Using Massive fMRI Data to Understand the Encoding of Dynamic Social Scenes

    A recently collected fMRI dataset contains 6 participants who watched 6 seasons of the TV show Friends while in the scanner. Such data presents the unique opportunity to explore evolution of person representations on a naturalistic timescale, as well as the encoding of complex social scenes.

Favorite papers

  • Jolly, E., & Chang, L.J. (2019). The Flatland Fallacy: Moving Beyond Low Dimensional Thinking. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1-22. PDF

  • McGuire, W. J. (1983). A contextualist theory of knowledge: Its implications for innovation and reform in psychological research. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 16, pp. 1-47). Academic Press.