Program Affiliations
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Symbolic Systems Program
Professional Education
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Ph.D., Columbia University, Psychology (2010)
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
My research focuses on the cognitive and neural bases of social behavior, and in particular on how people respond to each other's emotions (empathy), why they conform to each other (social influence), and why they choose to help each other (prosociality).
2024-25 Courses
- Introduction to Psychology
PSYCH 1 (Aut) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 182 (Aut) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 282 (Aut) -
Independent Studies (8)
- Graduate Research
PSYCH 275 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Independent Study
SYMSYS 196 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Independent Study
SYMSYS 296 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Master's Degree Project
SYMSYS 290 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Practicum in Teaching
PSYCH 281 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Reading and Special Work
PSYCH 194 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Senior Honors Tutorial
SYMSYS 190 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Special Laboratory Projects
PSYCH 195 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
- Graduate Research
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Prior Year Courses
2023-24 Courses
- Becoming Kinder
PSYCH 15N (Win) - Introduction to Psychology
PSYCH 1 (Aut) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 182 (Aut) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 282 (Aut)
2022-23 Courses
- Becoming Kinder
PSYCH 15N (Spr) - Introduction to Psychology
PSYCH 1 (Aut) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 182 (Aut) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 282 (Aut)
2021-22 Courses
- Communicating Psychology
PSYCH 271 (Win) - Introduction to Psychology
PSYCH 1 (Spr) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 182 (Spr) - Practicum in Teaching PSYCH 1
PSYCH 282 (Spr)
- Becoming Kinder
Stanford Advisees
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Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC)
Ashish Mehta, Katie Roehrick, Serena Soh, Huan Wang -
Postdoctoral Faculty Sponsor
Rui Pei -
Doctoral Dissertation Advisor (AC)
Eric Neumann -
Doctoral (Program)
Catherine Garton -
Postdoctoral Research Mentor
Rui Pei
All Publications
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Intuitive Prosociality
CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2013; 22 (6): 466-470
View details for DOI 10.1177/0963721413492764
View details for Web of Science ID 000327758400008
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Empathic accuracy and cognition in schizotypal personality disorder
PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH
2013; 210 (1): 232-241
Abstract
Interpersonal dysfunction contributes to significant disability in the schizophrenia spectrum. Schizotypal Personality Disorder (SPD) is a schizophrenia-related personality demonstrating social cognitive impairment in the absence of frank psychosis. Past research indicates that cognitive dysfunction or schizotypy may account for social cognitive dysfunction in this population. We tested SPD subjects and healthy controls on the Empathic Accuracy (EA) paradigm and the Reading of the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), assessing the impact of EA on social support. We also explored whether EA differences could be explained by intelligence, working memory, trait empathy, or attachment avoidance. SPD subjects did not differ from controls in RMET, but demonstrated lower EA during negative valence videos, associated with lower social support. Dynamic, multimodal EA paradigms may be more effective at capturing interpersonal dysfunction than static image tasks such as RMET. Schizotypal severity, trait empathy, and cognitive dysfunction did not account for empathic dysfunction in SPD, although attachment avoidance is related to empathic differences. Empathic dysfunction for negative affect contributes to decreased social support in the schizophrenia spectrum. Future research may shed further light on potential links between attachment avoidance, empathic dysfunction, and social support.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.psychres.2013.05.025
View details for Web of Science ID 000326859400036
View details for PubMedID 23810511
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Dynamics of isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector
NUCLEAR PHYSICS B
2013; 875 (3): 483-535
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2013.07.025
View details for Web of Science ID 000324601700001
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Interpersonal Emotion Regulation
EMOTION
2013; 13 (5): 803-810
Abstract
Contemporary emotion regulation research emphasizes intrapersonal processes such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, but people experiencing affect commonly choose not to go it alone. Instead, individuals often turn to others for help in shaping their affective lives. How and under what circumstances does such interpersonal regulation modulate emotional experience? Although scientists have examined allied phenomena such as social sharing, empathy, social support, and prosocial behavior for decades, there have been surprisingly few attempts to integrate these data into a single conceptual framework of interpersonal regulation. Here we propose such a framework. We first map a "space" differentiating classes of interpersonal regulation according to whether an individual uses an interpersonal regulatory episode to alter their own or another person's emotion. We then identify 2 types of processes--response-dependent and response-independent--that could support interpersonal regulation. This framework classifies an array of processes through which interpersonal contact fulfills regulatory goals. More broadly, it organizes diffuse, heretofore independent data on "pieces" of interpersonal regulation, and identifies growth points for this young and exciting research domain.
View details for DOI 10.1037/a0033839
View details for Web of Science ID 000325467200001
View details for PubMedID 24098929
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Cue Integration: A Common Framework for Social Cognition and Physical Perception
PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2013; 8 (3): 296-312
Abstract
Scientists examining how people understand other minds have long thought that this task must be something like how people perceive the physical world. This comparison has proven to be deeply generative, as models of physical perception and social cognition have evolved in parallel. In this article, I propose extending this classic analogy in a new direction by proposing cue integration as a common feature of social cognition and physical perception. When encountering complex social cues-which happens often-perceivers use multiple processes for understanding others' minds. Like physical senses (e.g., vision or audition), social cognitive processes have often been studied as though they operate in relative isolation. In the domain of physical perception, this assumption has broken down, following evidence that perception is instead characterized by pervasive integration of multisensory information. Such integration is, in turn, elegantly described by Bayesian inferential models. By adopting a similar cue integration framework, researchers can similarly understand and formally model the ways that we perceive others' minds based on complex social information.
View details for DOI 10.1177/1745691613475454
View details for Web of Science ID 000318574900008
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Response of Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Predicts Altruistic Behavior
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
2012; 32 (22): 7646-7650
Abstract
Human beings have an unusual proclivity for altruistic behavior, and recent commentators have suggested that these prosocial tendencies arise from our unique capacity to understand the minds of others (i.e., to mentalize). The current studies test this hypothesis by examining the relation between altruistic behavior and the reflexive engagement of a neural system reliably associated with mentalizing. Results indicated that activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex--a region consistently involved in understanding others' mental states--predicts both monetary donations to others and time spent helping others. These findings address long-standing questions about the proximate source of human altruism by suggesting that prosocial behavior results, in part, from our broader tendency for social-cognitive thought.
View details for DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6193-11.2012
View details for Web of Science ID 000304627100023
View details for PubMedID 22649243
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3387686
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Social Cognitive Conflict Resolution: Contributions of Domain-General and Domain-Specific Neural Systems
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
2010; 30 (25): 8481-8488
Abstract
Cognitive control mechanisms allow individuals to behave adaptively in the face of complex and sometimes conflicting information. Although the neural bases of these control mechanisms have been examined in many contexts, almost no attention has been paid to their role in resolving conflicts between competing social cues, which is surprising given that cognitive conflicts are part of many social interactions. Evidence about the neural processing of social information suggests that two systems--the mirror neuron system (MNS) and mental state attribution system (MSAS)--are specialized for processing nonverbal and contextual social cues, respectively. This could support a model of social cognitive conflict resolution in which competition between social cues would recruit domain-general cognitive control mechanisms, which in turn would bias processing toward the MNS or MSAS. Such biasing could also alter social behaviors, such as inferences made about the internal states of others. We tested this model by scanning participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they drew inferences about the social targets' emotional states based on congruent or incongruent nonverbal and contextual social cues. Conflicts between social cues recruited the anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal cortex, brain areas associated with domain-general control processes. This activation was accompanied by biasing of neural activity toward areas in the MNS or MSAS, which tracked, respectively, with perceivers' behavioral reliance on nonverbal or contextual cues when drawing inferences about targets' emotions. Together, these data provide evidence about both domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms involved in resolving social cognitive conflicts.
View details for DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0382-10.2010
View details for Web of Science ID 000279076900014
View details for PubMedID 20573895
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2916865
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Your pain or mine? Common and distinct neural systems supporting the perception of pain in self and other
SOCIAL COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE
2008; 3 (2): 144-160
Abstract
Humans possess a remarkable capacity to understand the suffering of others. Cognitive neuroscience theories of empathy suggest that this capacity is supported by 'shared representations' of self and other. Consistent with this notion, a number of studies have found that perceiving others in pain and experiencing pain oneself recruit overlapping neural systems. Perception of pain in each of these conditions, however, may also cause unique patterns of activation, that may reveal more about the processing steps involved in each type of pain. To address this issue, we examined neural activity while participants experienced heat pain and watched videos of other individuals experiencing injuries. Results demonstrated (i) that both tasks activated anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, consistent with prior work; (ii) whereas self-pain activated anterior and mid insula regions implicated in interoception and nociception, other pain activated frontal, premotor, parietal and amygdala regions implicated in emotional learning and processing social cues; and (iii) that levels of trait anxiety correlated with activity in rostral lateral prefrontal cortex during perception of other pain but not during self-pain. Taken together, these data support the hypothesis that perception of pain in self and other, while sharing some neural commonalities, differ in their recruitment of systems specifically associated with decoding and learning about internal or external cues.
View details for DOI 10.1093/scan/nsn006
View details for Web of Science ID 000256525000008
View details for PubMedID 19015105
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2555461
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Different circuits for different pain: Patterns of functional connectivity reveal distinct networks for processing pain in self and others
SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE
2007; 2 (3-4): 276-291
Abstract
The ability to empathize with the suffering of others is critical for maintaining relationships and engaging in prosocial behavior. Recently, a series of studies have demonstrated that while watching other people experience pain (other pain), participants engage the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), brain regions involved in the direct experience of pain (self pain). Here we test the hypothesis that common activity in ACC and AI may reflect the operation of distinct but overlapping networks of regions that support perception of self or other pain. To address this possibility, we scanned participants using fMRI while they received noxious thermal stimulation (self pain) or watched short videos of other people sustaining painful injuries (other pain). We isolated overlapping regions for self and other pain in the ACC and AI and then used them as seed regions for two kinds of functional connectivity analyses. These analyses identified areas whose activity co-varied with ACC and AI activity during self or other pain either across time (intra-individual connectivity) or across participants (inter-individual connectivity). Both connectivity analyses identified clusters in the midbrain and periaqueductal gray with greater connectivity to the AI during self pain as opposed to other pain. The opposite pattern was found in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, that showed greater connectivity to the ACC and AI during other pain than during self pain using both types of analysis. Intra-individual connectivity analyses also revealed regions in the superior temporal sulcus, posterior cingulate, and precuneus that became more connected to ACC during other pain as compared to self pain. Together, these data demonstrated that regions showing similar activity during self and other pain may nonetheless be part of distinct functional networks. These networks could not have been detected in prior work that examined overlap between self and other pain in terms of average activity, but not connectivity.
View details for DOI 10.1080/17470910701401973
View details for Web of Science ID 000252245400008
View details for PubMedID 18633819
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2913618