Kyong-sun Jin (진경선), Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University
Director, Child Development Lab

Email | kjin@sungshin.ac.kr
CV | Google Scholar 

Research Overview

Kyong-sun Jin studies the origins of social and moral understanding in infancy and early childhood. Her research examines how infants and toddlers form expectations about social interactions, including helping, comforting, reciprocity, group-based obligations, and the moral character of others. She also studies how children develop beliefs and stereotypes about social groups, and how these beliefs shape their motivation and aspirations.

Her work has been published in journals including Nature Communications and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She received the Kim Jae-Il Young Scholar Award from the Korean Association of Psychology and was selected as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago. 

Ph.D. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
M.A. Yonsei University
B.A. Yonsei University

Joohyang Park (박주향)

Ph.D student 

Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University

E-mail | joohyang.park96@gmail.com

Research Interests  

Joohyang Park's research focuses on the origins of social and moral cognition in infancy and early childhood. Her work examines how infants and young children develop expectations about helping, comforting, reciprocity, group-based obligations, and the moral character of others. Her work also explores children's sociomoral reasoning about social exclusion, ingroup and outgroup relations, and the devlopment of prosocial behavior and social motivation.

Seowoo Kim (김서우)

Ph.D student 

Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University

E-mail | seowookim1004@gmail.com

Research Interests  

Seowoo Kim's research examines how children come to understand and internalize social stereotypes, and how these beliefs shape their motivation and aspirations. Her current work extends this line by testing growth mindset interventions as a way to reduce these early gender gaps in motivation. She also studies the broader origins of children's sociomoral understanding, including how they understand group-based behavior. 

Sunah Choi (최선아)

M.A. student

Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University

E-mail | sunah.choi.98@gmail.com

Research Interests  

Sunah Choi's research examines the innate foundations of human socio-morality, as well as how language shapes infants' and toddlers' moral and social cognitive development. She also conducts research on children's stereotype about brilliance, including how they understand and evaluate social groups based on verbal and behavioral cues.

Jihyun Jeon (전지현)

M.A. student

Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University 

E-mail | jihyun.jeon23@gmail.com

Research Interests  

Jihyun Jeon's research examines how young children come to understand others' minds and how this understanding shapes their social and moral behavior. She studies the early origins of mental state reasoning and the factors that enable it to emerge across development. Her current work extends this line by exploring how social-cognitive understanding relates to children's behavioral outcomes, including academic cheating and persistence.

Jihyeon Lee (이지현)

M.A. student

Department of Psychology, Sungshin Women’s University 

E-mail | jihyeon.lee.66@gmail.com

Research Interests