Jinwoo Lee

News
0010Jul, 2025My master’s thesis about awe was published at Communications Psychology!
 
Cover Page of ‘Awe is characterized as an ambivalent affect in the human behavior and cortex’!


Thrilled to share that my MS thesis on awe is published in Nature Portfolio's Communications Psychology!

Although awe has been described in philosophy as a distinct ambivalent experience, modern affective science has struggled to examine whether this ambivalence can be distinguished from simply pleasing or displeasing states (or their fluctuations). Combining VR, EEG, continuous affect rating, and deep representational learning/alignment, we show that subjective awe intensity across diverse scenarios is better predicted by behaviors and distinct neurogeometry associated with ambivalent feelings than by those linked solely to positive or negative affect. I hope my work serves as a case that the complex structure of emotions we experience in daily life can be explored within a scientific framework.

This project was made possible through an interdisciplinary approach. I am grateful to professional filmmaker Seung Yeop Oh for collaborating on the design of VR stimuli, to AI expert Danny Dongyeop Han for planning the analytical framework together, and to my advisor Jiook Cha, whose expertise bridges psychology, neuroscience, and AI.
















© 2025 Jinwoo Lee. All rights are reserved.