Willing to accept Primary and Secondary students for Fall 2025
chstone@jjay.cuny.edu
Charles B. Stone is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department in Psychology & Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, CUNY. A native of Washington State and trained in Cognitive Science in Australia (Ph.D., Macquarie University, 2011), he commenced his academic career at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, where he majored in sociology before moving to New York to complete his MA in psychology at the New School for Social Research. Before coming to John Jay College, he completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium.
Dr. Stone’s publications have dealt with the formation and maintenance of collective memories, mnemonic consequences of silence, intergenerational transmission of memories, the mnemonic consequences associated with denials, social media and jury deliberations. He is actively involved in a number of psychology, forensic and memory associations around the world. He has also been an expert witness for a number trials. Additionally, he recently was an Editor for the American Psychology-Law Society.
He recently received the Distinguished Faculty Service to Students award (2020-2021), the Outstanding Scholarly Mentor award last year (2019-2020) and has received internationally competitive fellowships to conduct research in Belgium (2017) and Australia (2017).
Currently, he is an Editor for the journal, Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Research Topics:
Autobiographical memory, collective memory, social aspects of memory, meta-cognitive judgments (e.g., confidence), decision-making within the judicial system, intergenerational transmission of both mundane and traumatic memories/events
Research Summary:
Charles B. Stone is a cognitive scientist who studies how autobiographical memories and collective memories and individuals’ confidence in said memories are shaped through social interactions. In particular, he has examined how WWII and 9/11 memories transmit across generations, the mnemonic consequences of silence in the couse of social interactions, and how deliberations on the part of jurors shape their memories of the trail and, in turn, their decision-making. Recently, he has started a research project examining how social media use shapes both the producers’ and consumers’ autobiographical and collective memories.
Since arriving at John Jay College in 2013, he has mentored 2 Ph.D. student and 20 M.A. students. He has been honored for his ability to mentor MA and BA students, being awarded the Faculty Mentor of the Year award twice (2014-2016) and the Outstanding Scholarly Mentor award (2019-2020), respectively.
Current Projects/Research Interests
- How social media usage shapes the way individuals and groups remember their personal and collective pasts
- Understanding how individuals appraise the trsutworthiness of information on social media and how to improve it (in the works with Dr. Shweta Jain in Computer Science, NSF)
- The long-term retention & intergenerational transmission of emotional memories
- Covid-19, AIDs, 9/11 (submitted, NIH)
- Role of monuments and museums
Recent Publications
Stone, C.B. (2024). Social influences shape autobiographical remembering: A commentary on understanding autobiographical memory in the digital age: The AMEDIA model. Psychological Inquiry.
Stone, C.B. (in press). How social media shapes the way the past is collectively remembered. In A. Erll & W. Hirst (eds.), Breaking down the silos: Memory between cognition, culture, and political momentum. Oxford, UK, Oxford Press.
Van der Haegen, A., Stone, C.B., Luminet, O., & Hirst, W. (2022). Conversational roles, generational differences and the emergence of historical and personal memories surrounding WWII during familial discussions. Discourse Processes, 59 (7), 500-519.
Stone, C.B., & Zwolinski, A. (2022). The mnemonic consequences associated with sharing personal photographs on social media. Memory, Mind & Media, 1 (e12), 1-11.
Stone, C.B., Guan, L., Labarbera, G., Ceren, M., Garcia, B., Huie, K., Stump, C., & Wang, Q. (2022). Why do people share their personal experiences online? An examination of the motives and characteristics of social media users. Memory [Special Issue], 30 (4), 450-464.
Jay, A.C.V., Stone, C.B., Fondacaro, M.R., Yoon, J., & Zuraw, K. (2021). Similarity leniency in mens rea determinations and the mediating role of causal attributions [Electronic Version]. Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice, 16(2), 129-155.
Stone, C.B., Luminet, O., Jay, A.C.V., Licata, L., Klein, O., & Hirst, W. (2020). Public speeches induce “collective” forgetting? The Belgian King’s 2012 summer speech as a case study. Memory Studies, 15 (4), 713-730.
Bietti, L. & Stone, C.B. (2019). Editors’ Introduction: Remembering with others: Conversational dynamics and mnemonic outcomes. Topics in Cognitive Science, 11, 592-608. doi: 10.1111/tops.12443
Stone, C. B., & Wang, Q. (2019). From conversations to digital communication: The mnemonic consequences of consuming and producing information via social media. Topics in cognitive science, 11(4), 774-793.
Stone, C. B., & Jay, A. C. (2019). From the individual to the collective: The emergence of a psychological approach to collective memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(4), 504-515.
