Publications

Perricone, A. M., Bitran, A., & Ahn, W. (2024). Explaining how psychotherapy affects the brain can increase the perceived effectiveness of psychotherapy: A randomized controlled trial. Behavior Therapy. Link

Perricone, A. M., & Ahn, W. (2023). Emphasizing controllability over biological processes underlying depression: Effects on the perceived credibility of psychotherapy. Cognitive Therapy and Research. 1-12. PDF

Ahn, W., & Perricone, A.M. (2023). Impacts of learning one’s own genetic susceptibility to mental disorders. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 32(1), 42-48.  PDF

Perricone, A. M., & Ahn, W. (2023). Reasons for the Belief that Psychotherapy is Less Effective for Biologically Attributed Mental Disorders. Cognitive Therapy and Research. 1-11. PDF

Ahn, W. (2022, September) Thinking 101: How to reason better to live better, Flatiron, Learn More

Perricone, A., Baskin-Sommers, A., & Ahn, W. K. (2022). The effect of neuroscientific evidence on sentencing depends on how one conceives of reasons for incarceration. PLoS ONE17(11), e0276237.

Mermin-Bunnell, K. & Ahn, W. (2022) It’s time to be disgusting about COVID-19: Effect of disgust priming on COVID-19 public health compliance among liberals and conservatives. PLoS ONE, 17(5). PDF

Ahn, W., & Perricone, A.M. (2022). The symptom discounting effect: what to do when negative genetic test results become risk factors for alcohol use disorder. Scientific Reports, 12. PDF

Valtonen, J., Ahn, W., & Cimpian, A. (2021). Neurodualism: People Assume that the Brain Affects the Mind more than the Mind Affects the Brain, Cognitive Science, PDF

Ahn, W., Bitran, A., & Lebowitz, M. (2020). Effects of genetic information on memory for severity of depressive symptoms. Plos one15(10), e0239714.

Kim, K., & Ahn, W. K. (2020). Perceptions of the competent but depressed. Emotion20(2), 192 PDF

Ahn, W. K., Kim, S. S., Kim, K., & McNally, P. K. (2019). Which grades are better, A’s and C’s, or all B’s? Effects of variability in grades on mock college admissions decisions. Judgment & Decision Making16(6). PDF

Ahn, W. , & Lebowitz, M. S. (2018). An experiment assessing effects of personalized feedback about genetic susceptibility to obesity on attitudes towards diet and exercise. Appetite120, 23-31. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W.  (2018). Blue Genes? Understanding and Mitigating Negative Consequences of Personalized Information about Genetic Risk for Depression. Journal of Genetic Counseling, 1-13. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W.  (2017). Testing positive for a genetic predisposition to depression magnifies retrospective memory for depressive symptoms. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology85(11), 1052-1063. PDF

Kim, N. S., Johnson, S., Ahn, W., & Knobe, J. (2017).  The effect of abstract versus concrete framing on judgments of biological and psychological bases of behavior. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. 2:17. doi:10.1186/s41235-017-0056-5

Ahn, W., Kim, N. & Lebowitz, M.S. (2017). Role of causal knowledge in reasoning about mental disorders. In M.R. Waldmann (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. PDF

Johnson, S.G.B., & Ahn, W. (2017). Causal mechanisms. In M. Waldmann (Ed.). Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. PDF

Kim, N. S., Ahn, W., Johnson, S., & Knobe, J. (2016). The Influence of Framing on Clinicians’ Judgments of the Biological Basis of Behaviors, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22, 39-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xap0000070

Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W. (2016). Using Personification and Agency Reorientation to Reduce Mental-Health Clinicians’ Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward Patients. Stigma and Health, 13, 176-184. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/sah0000020

Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W. (2015). Emphasizing Malleability in the biology of depression: Durable effects on perceived agency and prognostic pessimism. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 125-130. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., Ahn, W., & Oltman, K. (2015). Sometimes More Competent, But Always Less Warm: Perceptions of Biologically Oriented Mental-Health Clinicians. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1-9. PDF

Johnson, S., & Ahn, W. (2015). Causal networks or causal islands? The representation of mechanisms and the transitivity of causal judgment, Cognitive Science. 1-36. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W. (2014). Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians’ empathy.  Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. 111, 7786–17790, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1414058111. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., Pyun, J., & Ahn, W. (2014). Effects of biological explanations for generalized anxiety disorder. Psychiatric Services, 65, 498-503. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201300011. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., Ahn, W., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2013). Fixable or fate? Perception of the biology of depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81, 518-527. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0031730

Ahn, W., Taylor, E.G., Kato, D., Marsh, J, & Bloom, P. (2013). Causal essentialism in kinds, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 1113-30. PDF

Lebowitz, M. S., Rosenthal, J. E., & Ahn, W. (2012). Effects of biological versus psychosocial explanations on stigmatization of children with ADHD, Journal of Attention Disorders, DOI: 10.1177/1087054712469255, PDF

Taylor, E. G., & Ahn, W. (2012). Causal Imprinting in Causal Structure Learning, Cognitive Psychology, 65, 381-413.  PDF

Marsh, J. K., & Ahn, W. (2012). Memory for patient information as a function of experience in mental health. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 462–474. PDF

Lebowitz, M., & Ahn, W. (2012). Combining biomedical accounts of mental disorders with treatability information to reduce mental illness stigma. Psychiatric Services, 63, 496–499. PDF

Rottman, B. M., Kim, N. S., Ahn, W., & Sanislow, C. A. (2011). Can personality disorder experts recognize DSM-IV personality disorders from five-factor model descriptions of patient cases? Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 72, 630-639. PDF

Rottman, B. M., Ahn, W., & Luhmann, C. C. (2011). When and how do people reason about unobserved causes? In P. M. Illari, F. Russo, & J. Williamson (Eds.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press.

Luhmann, C. C., & Ahn, W. (2011). Expectations and Interpretations During Causal Learning, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 37, 568-587.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022970

Pacer, M., & Ahn, W. (2011). Finding the Cause: Examining the Role of Qualitative Causal Inference through Categorical Judgments, In L. Carlson, C., Hoelscher, & T.F. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 1412-1417). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. PDF

Rottman, B. M., & Ahn, W. (2011). Effect of grouping of evidence types on learning about interactions between observed and unobserved causes, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 1432-1448. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024829

Rottman, B. M. & Ahn, W. (2009). Causal Learning about Tolerance and Sensitization. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16, 1043-1049.PDF

Rottman, B. M. & Ahn, W. (2009). Causal Inference when Observed and Unobserved Causes Interact. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.1477-1482). PDF

Rottman, B. M., Kim, N. S., Ahn, W., & Sanislow, C. A. (2009). The Cognitive Consequences of Using Categorical versus Dimensional Classification Systems: The Case of Personality Disorder Experts. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2825-2830). PDF

Ahn, W., Proctor, C. C., & Flanagan, E. H. (2009). Mental health clinicians’ beliefs about the biological, psychological, and environmental bases of mental disorders. Cognitive Science, 33, 147-182. PDF

Marsh, J. K. & Ahn, W. (2009). Spontaneous assimilation of continuous values and temporal information in causal induction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 334-352. PDF

Rottman, B. M., Ahn, W., Sanislow, C. A., & Kim, N. S. (2009). Can Clinicians Recognize DSM-IV Personality Disorders from Five-Factor Model Descriptions of Patient Cases? The American Journal of Psychiatry, 166, 427-433. PDF

Ahn, W., & Kim, N. S. (2008). Causal theories of mental disorder concepts. Psychological Science Agenda, 22, 3-8. PDF

Ahn, W., Marsh, J. K., & Luhmann, C. C. (2007). Dynamic interpretations of covariation data. In A. Gopnik & L. Schulz (Eds.) Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy, and Computation (Oxford Series in Cognitive Development) (pp. x-xx). New York: Oxford University Press. PDF

Luhmann, C. C., & Ahn, W. (2007). BUCKLE: A model of unobserved cause learning. Psychological Review. 114(3), 657-677. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.3.657

Proctor, C., & Ahn, W. (2007). The effect of causal knowledge on judgments of the likelihood of unknown features. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 14(4), 635-639. PDF

Ahn, W., Flanagan, E., Marsh, J. K., & Sanislow, C. (2006). Beliefs about essences and the reality of mental disorders. Psychological Science. 17, 759-766. PDF

Luhmann, C. C., & Ahn, W. (2006). Modeling the role of unobserved causes in causal learning.  Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1741-1746). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. PDF

Luhmann, C. C., Ahn, W., & Palmeri, T. (2006). Theory-based categorization under speeded conditions, Memory & Cognition, 34, 1102-1111.PDF

Marsh, J.K., & Ahn, W. (2006). Order effects in contingency learning: The role of task complexity. Memory & Cognition, Vol 34(3), Apr 2006. pp. 568-576. PDF

Marsh, J. K., & Ahn, W. (2006). The role of causal status versus inter-feature links in feature weighting. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 561-566). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.  PDF

Ahn ,W., Goldstone, R. L., Love, B. C., Markman, A. B., Wolff, P. (2005). Douglas L. Medin, His Life, and His Intellectual Heritage. In W. Ahn, R. Goldstone, B. Love, A. Markman, & P. Wolff (Eds.) Categorization inside and outside the laboratory: Essays in honor of Douglas L. Medin (pp. 3-11). Washington D.C.: APA publisher.

Ahn, W., & Kim, N. (2005). The Effect of Causal Theories on Mental Disorder Diagnosis. In W. Ahn, R. Goldstone, B. Love, A. Markman, & P. Wolff (Eds.) Categorization inside and outside the laboratory: Essays in honor of Douglas L. Medin (pp. 273-288). Washington D.C.: APA publisher. PDF

Ahn, W., Levin, S., & Marsh, J. K. (2005). Determinants of Feature Centrality in Clinicians’ Concepts of Mental Disorders, Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. PDF

Ahn, W., & Luhmann, C. C. (2005). Demystifying theory-based categorization. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe & D. Rakison (Eds.) Building object categories in developmental time (277-300). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Inc. PDF

Luhmann, C. C., & Ahn, W. (2005). The meaning and computation of causal power: A critique of Cheng (1997) and Novickand Cheng (2004). Psychological Review. 112, 685-693. http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&uid=2005-08166-014

Luhmann, C. C., & Ahn, W. (2005). Postscript: Abandonment of Causal Power. Psychological Review. 112, 692-693. 

Proctor, C. C., & Ahn, W. (2005). Causes Have Greater Inductive Potency than Effects, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. PDF

Ahn, W., Novick, L., & Kim, N. S. (2003). Understanding it makes it more normal. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 10(3), 746-752. PDF

Marsh, J. K., & Ahn, W. (2003). Interpretation of ambiguous information in causal induction. In R. Alterman & D. Kirsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 775-780). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. PDF

Ahn, W., Marsh, J., Luhmann, C., & Lee, K (2002). Effect of theory-based feature correlations on typicality judgments. Memory & Cognition, 30, 107-118. PDF

Kim, N. S., & Ahn, W. (2002). Clinical psychologists’ theory-based representations of mental disorders predict their diagnostic reasoning and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.131.4.451

Kim, N. S., & Ahn, W. (2002). The influence of naive causal theories on lay concepts of mental illness. American Journal of Psychology, 115, 33-65 PDF

Luhmann, C. C., Ahn, W., & Palmeri, T. (2002). Theories and similarity: Categorization under speeded condition. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 590-595). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. PDF

Ahn, W., Kalish, C., Gelman, S. A., Medin, D. L., Luhmann, C., Atran, S., Coley, J. D., Shafto, P. (2001). Why essences are essential in the psychology of concepts. Cognition, 82, 59-69. PDF

Dennis, M. J., & Ahn, W. (2001). Primacy in causal strength judgments. Memory & Cognition, 29, 152-164. PDF

Ahn, W., & Dennis, M. (2000). Induction of causal chain. Proceedings of the Twenty-second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, NJ: Mahwah. PDF

Ahn, W., Gelman, S. A., Amsterlaw, J. A., Hohenstein, J., & Kalish, C. W. (2000). Causal status effect in children’s categorization. Cognition, 76, B35-B43. PDF

Ahn, W., & Kalish, C. (2000). The role of covariation vs. mechanism information in causal attribution. In R. Wilson, & F. Keil (Eds.) Cognition and explanation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. PDF

Ahn, W., & Kim, N. S. (2000). The causal status effect in categorization: An overview. In D. L. Medin (Ed.) ,Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 40, (p. 23-65) New York: Academic Press. PDF

Ahn, W., Kim, N. S., Lassaline, M. E., & Dennis, M. J. (2000). Causal status as a determinant of feature centrality, Cognitive Psychology, 41, 361-416. PDF

Ahn, W. (1999). Effect of Causal Structure on Category Construction. Memory & Cognition, 27, 1008-1023. PDF

Ahn, W., & Graham, L. M. (1999). The impact of necessity and sufficiency on information choices in the Wason four-card selection task. Psychological Science, 10,237-242. PDF

Sloman, S., & Ahn, W. (1999). Feature centrality: Naming versus Imagining. Memory & Cognition, 27, 526-537. PDF

Ahn, W. (1998). Why are different features central for natural kinds and artifacts? Cognition, 69, 135-178. PDF

Ahn, W., & Nosek, B. (1998). Heuristics used in reasoning with multiple causes and effects. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, NJ: Mahwah. 24-29. PDF

Sloman, S., Love, B., & Ahn, W. (1998). Feature centrality and conceptual coherence. Cognitive Science, 22, 189-228. PDF

Ahn, W., & Dennis, M. (1997). Deep versus surface features in categorization and similarity judgments. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conferenc of the Cognitive Science Society  (pp. 380) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ahn, W., & Bailenson, J. (1996). Causal attribution as a search for underlying mechanisms: An explanation of the conjunction fallacy and the discounting principle. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 82-123. PDF

Ahn, W., Kalish, C. W., Medin, D. L., & Gelman, S. A. (1995). The role of covariation vs. mechanism information in causal attribution. Cognition, 54, 299-352. PDF

Ahn, W., & Medin, D. L. (1992). A two-stage model of category construction. Cognitive Science, 16, 81-122. PDF

Ahn, W., Brewer, W. F., & Mooney, R. J. (1992). Schema acquisition from a single example. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 391-412.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.18.2.391