Jon Freeman (academic)

Last updated
Jon Freeman
Born
Jonathan B. Freeman
Alma mater New York University
Tufts University
Scientific career
Institutions Columbia University
Dartmouth College
New York University
Doctoral advisor Nalini Ambady

Jonathan B. Freeman is an American psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Columbia University. He is best known for his work on the neuroscience of person perception and social cognition, as well as mouse-tracking methodology in cognitive science. His research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying split-second social judgments and their impact on behaviour.

Contents

Early life and education

Freeman received his BA from New York University in 2007, where he first studied social psychology. [1] He earned his PhD at Tufts University in 2012, where he worked with Nalini Ambady.

Research and career

After his doctorate, Freeman joined the faculty of Dartmouth College as an Assistant Professor. [2] [3] He moved to New York University as an Assistant Professor in 2014, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, and moved to Columbia University as an Associate Professor in 2022. [4] [5] He directs the Social Cognitive and Neural Sciences Lab. [6] His research combines behavioural paradigms with computational modelling and human neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. [1]

Freeman investigates how we form social judgments and first impressions. In particular, his work has shown that, because facial cues are often complex and ambiguous, multiple “partial” perceptions must initially compete over fractions of a second. This dynamic competition is argued to be central to the ability to form social judgments. [4] He proposed a theoretical framework known as the "dynamic interactive model" that posits flexible interplay between social cognition and visual perception, and his work has shown that stereotypes and other kinds of social or emotional knowledge can affect visual processing. [7] [8] An example is how stereotypes become expectations that impact visual prototypes and create distortions in how faces are perceived. [9] His research has demonstrated that tacit assumptions about social groups, emotions, or personality can all influence the way we visually perceive and internally represent others' faces. [10] [11] [12] [13] These effects are thought to be driven by specific interactions between the fusiform face area, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior temporal lobe. [7] [14]

Freeman studies several other topics in social neuroscience related to social cognition, emotion, and decision-making. [6] For instance, he has examined mechanisms underlying the acquisition and reversal of unconscious bias, the brain's response to facial expressions or a person's trustworthiness outside conscious awareness, and the impact of split-second judgments on real-world outcomes. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]

Freeman developed MouseTracker, a software that tracks decision-making in the brain over hundreds of milliseconds by analysing the trajectory of a human subject's response-directed hand movement via a mouse cursor. [19] It allows researchers to assess real-time processing in cognitive tasks. [20] MouseTracker is used by over 3,000 researchers in several different disciplines. [21] Freeman's work has helped establish and popularise the mouse-tracking technique in cognitive science. [22] [23] [24]

Freeman is on the editorial board of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. [25] He previously served as an Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Advocacy and academic service

Freeman wrote a commentary for Nature about how biases and non-supportive science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) environments hinder the careers of LGBTQ people in STEM fields, and yet this group is often left out of diversity initiatives. [26] He identified that LGBTQ people in STEM are less represented than statistically expected, reporting negative workplace experiences, and leaving STEM fields at a high rate. [26] [27] Realising the importance of comprehensive data, he led a collaborative effort with the support of 17 scientific organisations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, requesting the National Science Foundation to include sexual orientation and gender identity demographic questions in its U.S. STEM workforce surveys. [28] [29] [30] LGBTQ data from these surveys is critical for researchers and policymakers to be able to understand and address potential disparities and disadvantages of LGBTQ people in U.S. STEM fields. [27] For instance, data from these surveys is necessary for official documentation of underrepresented groups in STEM and potential allocation of federal resources. [31] The National Science Foundation is currently piloting these questions for future surveys. [28] [31]

Awards

2019 LGBTQ Scientist of the Year, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals [29]

2019 Association for Psychological Science Janet T. Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions [32]

2017 Society for Social Neuroscience Early Career Award

2017 National Science Foundation CAREER Award [33]

2016 Innovation Award, Social and Affective Neuroscience Society

2016 Early Career Award, International Social Cognition Network [34]

2016 SAGE Young Scholar Award, Foundation for Personality & Social Psychology

2015 Rising Star Award, Association for Psychological Science [35]

2015 Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 [36]

2014 Pacific Standard Magazine's Top 30 Thinkers Under 30 [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive bias</span> Systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality.

Social cognition is a topic within psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions.

The physical attractiveness stereotype, commonly known as the "beautiful-is-good" stereotype, is the tendency to assume that physically attractive individuals, coinciding with social beauty standards, also possess other desirable personality traits, such as intelligence, social competence, and morality. The target benefits from what has been coined as “pretty privilege”, namely social, economic, and political advantages or benefits. Physical attractiveness can have a significant effect on how people are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage.

Moral psychology is a field of study in both philosophy and psychology. Historically, the term "moral psychology" was used relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development. Moral psychology eventually came to refer more broadly to various topics at the intersection of ethics, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Some of the main topics of the field are moral judgment, moral reasoning, moral sensitivity, moral responsibility, moral motivation, moral identity, moral action, moral development, moral diversity, moral character, altruism, psychological egoism, moral luck, moral forecasting, moral emotion, affective forecasting, and moral disagreement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metacognition</span> Self-awareness about thinking, higher-order thinking skills

Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond", or "on top of". Metacognition can take many forms, such as reflecting on one's ways of thinking, and knowing when and how oneself and others use particular strategies for problem-solving. There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) cognitive conceptions and (2) cognitive regulation system. Research has shown that both components of metacognition play key roles in metaconceptual knowledge and learning. Metamemory, defined as knowing about memory and mnemonic strategies, is an important aspect of metacognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Deary</span> Scottish psychologist

Ian John Deary OBE, FBA, FRSE, FMedSci is a Scottish psychologist known for work in the fields of intelligence, cognitive ageing, cognitive epidemiology, and personality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">In-group and out-group</span> Sociological notions

In social psychology and sociology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example identify with their peer group, family, community, sports team, political party, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nation. It has been found that the psychological membership of social groups and categories is associated with a wide variety of phenomena.

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than solitary. As such, Homo sapiens create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. In this regard, studies indicate that various social influences, including life events, poverty, unemployment and loneliness can influence health related biomarkers. The term "social neuroscience" can be traced to a publication entitled "Social Neuroscience Bulletin" which was published quarterly between 1988 and 1994. The term was subsequently popularized in an article by John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson, published in the American Psychologist in 1992. Cacioppo and Berntson are considered as the legitimate fathers of social neuroscience. Still a young field, social neuroscience is closely related to personality neuroscience, affective neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on how the brain mediates social interactions. The biological underpinnings of social cognition are investigated in social cognitive neuroscience.

Susan Tufts Fiske is an American psychologist who serves as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. She is a social psychologist known for her work on social cognition, stereotypes, and prejudice. Fiske leads the Intergroup Relations, Social Cognition, and Social Neuroscience Lab at Princeton University. Her theoretical contributions include the development of the stereotype content model, ambivalent sexism theory, power as control theory, and the continuum model of impression formation.

Shelley Elizabeth Taylor is an American psychologist. She serves as a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University, and was formerly on the faculty at Harvard University. A prolific author of books and scholarly journal articles, Taylor has long been a leading figure in two subfields related to her primary discipline of social psychology: social cognition and health psychology. Her books include The Tending Instinct and Social Cognition, the latter by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor.

Michael Inzlicht is professor of psychology at the University of Toronto recognized in the areas of social psychology and neuroscience. Although he has published papers on the topics of prejudice, academic performance, and religion, his most recent interests have been in the topics of self-control, where he borrows methods from affective and cognitive neuroscience to understand the underlying nature of self-control, including how it is driven by motivation.

The concept of motor cognition grasps the notion that cognition is embodied in action, and that the motor system participates in what is usually considered as mental processing, including those involved in social interaction. The fundamental unit of the motor cognition paradigm is action, defined as the movements produced to satisfy an intention towards a specific motor goal, or in reaction to a meaningful event in the physical and social environments. Motor cognition takes into account the preparation and production of actions, as well as the processes involved in recognizing, predicting, mimicking, and understanding the behavior of other people. This paradigm has received a great deal of attention and empirical support in recent years from a variety of research domains including embodied cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology.

Priming is a concept in psychology to describe how exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The priming effect is the positive or negative effect of a rapidly presented stimulus on the processing of a second stimulus that appears shortly after. Generally speaking, the generation of priming effect depends on the existence of some positive or negative relationship between priming and target stimuli. For example, the word nurse might be recognized more quickly following the word doctor than following the word bread. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Priming effects involve word recognition, semantic processing, attention, unconscious processing, and many other issues, and are related to differences in various writing systems. How quickly this effect occurs is contested; some researchers claim that priming effects are almost instantaneous.

Cultural neuroscience is a field of research that focuses on the interrelation between a human's cultural environment and neurobiological systems. The field particularly incorporates ideas and perspectives from related domains like anthropology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to study sociocultural influences on human behaviors. Such impacts on behavior are often measured using various neuroimaging methods, through which cross-cultural variability in neural activity can be examined.

A number of studies have found that human biology can be linked with political orientation. This means that an individual's biology may predispose them to a particular political orientation and ideology or, conversely, that subscription to certain ideologies may predispose them to measurable biological and health outcomes.

An implicit bias or implicit stereotype is the pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group.

Moral foundations theory is a social psychological theory intended to explain the origins of and variation in human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, modular foundations. It was first proposed by the psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, building on the work of cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder. More recently, Mohammad Atari, Jesse Graham, and Jonathan Haidt have revised some aspects of the theory and developed new measurement tools. The theory has been developed by a diverse group of collaborators and popularized in Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. The theory proposes that morality is "more than one thing", first arguing for five foundations, and later expanding for six foundations :

Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Maddox</span> American social psychologist

Keith Maddox is a professor in the department of psychology at Tufts University. Maddox's research focuses on social cognition, and he is the director of the Tufts University Social Cognition Lab.

An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy where it might otherwise be expected to occur. Empathy gaps may occur due to a failure in the process of empathizing or as a consequence of stable personality characteristics, and may reflect either a lack of ability or motivation to empathize.

References

  1. 1 2 "Spotlight on Social Neuroscience | SPSP". spsp.org. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  2. ↑ "Neurotree - Jon Freeman". neurotree.org. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  3. 1 2 Andrews, Avital. "The 30 Top Thinkers Under 30: Jon Freeman, 27, Psychology". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  4. 1 2 "Jonathan B Freeman". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  5. ↑ "Jon Freeman | Department of Psychology". psychology.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  6. 1 2 "Freeman Lab". NYU. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  7. 1 2 Freeman, Jonathan B.; Johnson, Kerri L. (2016). "More Than Meets the Eye: Split-Second Social Perception". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 20 (5): 362–374. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.03.003. ISSN   1364-6613. PMC   5538856 . PMID   27050834.
  8. ↑ Freeman, Jonathan B.; Ambady, Nalini (2011). "A dynamic interactive theory of person construal". Psychological Review. 118 (2): 247–279. doi:10.1037/a0022327. ISSN   1939-1471. PMID   21355661. S2CID   7101466.
  9. ↑ Brooks, Jeffrey A.; Stolier, Ryan M.; Freeman, Jonathan B. (2018). "Stereotypes Bias Visual Prototypes for Sex and Emotion Categories". Social Cognition. 36 (5): 481–493. doi:10.1521/soco.2018.36.5.481. ISSN   0278-016X. S2CID   29000638.
  10. ↑ Freeman, Jonathan B; Stolier, Ryan M; Brooks, Jeffrey A; Stillerman, Benjamin S (December 2018). "The neural representational geometry of social perception". Current Opinion in Psychology. 24: 83–91. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.10.003. PMC   6377247 . PMID   30388494.
  11. ↑ Freeman, Jonathan B.; Walker, Mirella; Keller, Matthias D.; Hehman, Eric; Stolier, Ryan M. (2018-09-11). "The conceptual structure of face impressions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (37): 9210–9215. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115.9210S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1807222115 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   6140507 . PMID   30139918.
  12. ↑ Barachant, Alexandre; King, Jean-Remi (2017-12-13). "Riemannian Geometry Boosts Representational Similarity Analyses of Dense Neural Time Series". doi: 10.1101/232710 .{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  13. ↑ "How we judge personality from faces depends on our beliefs about how personality works". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  14. 1 2 Barnett, Benjamin O; Brooks, Jeffrey A; Freeman, Jonathan B (2020-12-03). "Stereotypes bias face perception via orbitofrontal–fusiform cortical interaction". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 16 (3): 302–314. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa165 . ISSN   1749-5016. PMC   7943359 . PMID   33270131.
  15. ↑ Hehman, Eric; Carpinella, Colleen M.; Johnson, Kerri L.; Leitner, Jordan B.; Freeman, Jonathan B. (September 2014). "Early Processing of Gendered Facial Cues Predicts the Electoral Success of Female Politicians". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 5 (7): 815–824. doi:10.1177/1948550614534701. ISSN   1948-5506. S2CID   7191969.
  16. ↑ Freeman, J. B.; Stolier, R. M.; Ingbretsen, Z. A.; Hehman, E. A. (2014-08-06). "Amygdala Responsivity to High-Level Social Information from Unseen Faces". Journal of Neuroscience. 34 (32): 10573–10581. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5063-13.2014 . ISSN   0270-6474. PMC   6802589 . PMID   25100591.
  17. ↑ Lick, David J.; Alter, Adam L.; Freeman, Jonathan B. (2018). "Superior pattern detectors efficiently learn, activate, apply, and update social stereotypes". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 147 (2): 209–227. doi: 10.1037/xge0000349 . ISSN   1939-2222. PMID   28726438. S2CID   21350104.
  18. ↑ Chua, Kao-Wei; Freeman, Jonathan B. (2020-11-28). "Facial Stereotype Bias Is Mitigated by Training". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 12 (7): 1335–1344. doi:10.1177/1948550620972550. ISSN   1948-5506. S2CID   229147576.
  19. ↑ "MouseTracker | Jon Freeman". MouseTracker. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  20. ↑ Freeman, Jonathan B.; Ambady, Nalini (2010). "MouseTracker: Software for studying real-time mental processing using a computer mouse-tracking method". Behavior Research Methods. 42 (1): 226–241. doi: 10.3758/brm.42.1.226 . ISSN   1554-351X. PMID   20160302.
  21. ↑ "User Base". MouseTracker. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  22. ↑ Faulkenberry, Thomas J.; Witte, Matthias; Hartmann, Matthias (2018-03-20). "Tracking the continuous dynamics of numerical processing: A brief review and editorial" (PDF). doi:10.31234/osf.io/pruz7.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  23. ↑ Freeman, Jonathan B.; Dale, Rick (2012-07-18). "Assessing bimodality to detect the presence of a dual cognitive process". Behavior Research Methods. 45 (1): 83–97. doi: 10.3758/s13428-012-0225-x . ISSN   1554-3528. PMID   22806703.
  24. ↑ Freeman, Jonathan B. (2018). "SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 27 (5): 315–323. doi:10.1177/0963721417746793. PMC   6301007 . PMID   30581254.
  25. ↑ "Editorial Board | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | Oxford Academic". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  26. 1 2 Freeman, Jon (July 2018). "LGBTQ scientists are still left out". Nature. 559 (7712): 27–28. Bibcode:2018Natur.559...27F. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05587-y . PMID   29968839.
  27. 1 2 Freeman, Jonathan B. (2020). "Measuring and Resolving LGBTQ Disparities in STEM". Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 7 (2): 141–148. doi:10.1177/2372732220943232. ISSN   2372-7322. S2CID   222111518.
  28. 1 2 Langin, Katie (2018-11-07). "NSF moves to pilot LGBT questions on national workforce surveys". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
  29. 1 2 "2019-02-04: NOGLSTP Recognizes Chan, Morales, and Freeman as LGBTQ+ Educator, Engineer, and Scientist of the Year for 2019, Esposito is Walt Westman Awardee – NOGLSTP" . Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  30. ↑ "AERA, AAAS, and Key Researchers Call on OMB to Require NSF to Include Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Measures in Surveys". www.aera.net. Retrieved 2020-12-26.
  31. 1 2 Langin, Katie (2020). "LGBTQ researchers say they want to be counted". Science. 370 (6523): 1391. Bibcode:2020Sci...370.1391L. doi:10.1126/science.370.6523.1391. PMID   33335044. S2CID   229317144.
  32. ↑ "APS Awards and Honors". Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  33. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#1654731 - CAREER: Neural Mechanisms of Stereotypic Vision". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  34. ↑ "About - Jon Freeman". Jon Freeman. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  35. ↑ "NYU Psychology Awards and Honors". NYU. Archived from the original on 2017-06-19. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  36. ↑ "Jon Freeman, 28". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.