*indicates student/trainee author in my lab

Self & Social Cognition 

*Stendel, M.S. & Chavez, R.S. (preprint). The role of meta-perception in self-esteem and implications for mental health. [PDF]

*Stendel, M.S., Clithero, J.A., & Chavez, R.S. (preprint). Computational mechanisms of self-enhancement during social comparison and their relationship to internalizing symptoms. [PDF]  [OSF]

Chavez, R.S., *Guthrie, T.D., & *Kapustka, J.M. (2025). Person knowledge is independently encoded by allocentric and egocentric reference frames within separate brain systems. Psychological Science, 36(4), 265-277. [PDF]  [OSF]

*Stendel, M.S., *Guthrie, T.D., *Guazzelli Williamson, V., & Chavez, R.S. (2024). Self-esteem modulates the brain-to-brain similarity of the representation of the self in the brains of others. Communications Psychology, 2(113), 1-8. [PDF] [OSF]

*Guthrie, T.D. & Chavez, R.S. (2024). Normativity vs. uniqueness: Effects of social relationship strength on neural representations of others. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 19(1), 1-10. [PDF]  [OSF]

Chavez, R.S., Cunningham, W.A., & Berkman, E.T. (2024). Multivariate Neuroimaging in Social and Personality Psychology. In Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology, 3rd edition (H. Reis, T. West, C. Judd, Eds.), Cambridge University Press. [PDF]

Hyon, R., Chavez, R.S., Chwe, J.A., Wheatley, T., Kleinbaum, A.M., & Parkinson, C. (2022). White matter connectivity in brain systems supporting social and affective processing predicts real-world social network characteristics. Communications Biology, 5(1), 1048. [PDF]

*Mattek, A., Chavez, S., Berkowitz, J. L., Gobbini, M. I., & Chavez, R. S. (preprint). 100 Peers: An open set of controlled emotional facial expressions for use in psychology and neuroscience experiments. [PDF]  [OSF]

*Guthrie, T. D., *Benadjaoud, Y. Y., & Chavez, R. S. (2022). Social relationship strength modulates the similarity of brain-to-brain representations of group members. Cerebral Cortex, 32, 2469–2477. [PDF]  [OSF]

Chavez R.S., *Tovar D.T., *Stendel M.S., & *Guthrie T.D. (2022). Generalizing effects of frontostriatal structural connectivity on self-esteem using predictive modeling. Cortex, 146, 66-73. [PDF] [OSF]

Broom, T.W., Chavez, R.S., Wagner, D.D. (2021). Becoming the king in the north: Identification with fictional characters is associate with greater self-other neural overlap. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 16(6), 875-882. [PDF]

*Tovar D.T. & Chavez R.S. (2021). Large-scale functional coactivation patterns reflect the structural connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 16(8), 875-882.  [PDF]  [GitHub]

Chavez, R.S. (2021). Tangled representations of self and others in the medial prefrontal cortex. In Ochsner, K. & Gilead, M. (Eds.), The Neural Bases of Mentalizing. Springer Press. [PDF]

Chavez, R.S. & Wagner, D.D. (2020). The neural representation of self is recapitulated in the brains of friends: A round-robin fMRI study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(3), 407-416. [PDF]  [OSF]

Wagner, D. D., Chavez, R. S., & Broom, T. W. (2019). Decoding the neural representation of self and person knowledge with multivariate pattern analysis and data‐driven approaches.Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 10(1), e1482. [PDF]

Chavez, R.S., Heatherton, T.F., & Wagner, D.D. (2017). Neural population decoding reveals the intrinsic positivity of the self. Cerebral Cortex, 11(1), 5222-5229. [PDF]

Chavez, R.S. & Heatherton, T.F. (2017). Structural integrity of frontostriatal connections predicts longitudinal changes in self-esteem. Social Neuroscience, 12(3), 280-286. [PDF]

Powers, K.E., Chavez, R.S., & Heatherton, T.F. (2016). Individual differences in response of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex predict daily social behavior. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(1), 121-126. [PDF]

Chavez, R.S. & Heatherton, T.F. (2015). Multimodal frontostriatal connectivity underlies individual differences in self-esteem. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(3), pp. 364-370. [PDF]

Chavez, R.S. & Heatherton, T.F. (2015), Representational similarity of social and valence information in the medial pFC. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(1), pp. 73-82. [PDF]

 Personality, Creativity, & Intelligence 

DeYoung, C.D., Hilger, K., Hanson, J.L., Abend, R., Allen, T.A., Beaty,R.E., Bellgrove, M.A., Blain, S.D., Chavez, R.S., Engel, S.A., Feilong, M.,Fornito, A.,Genç, E., Goghari,V., Grazioplene, R.G., Homan, P., Joyner, K., Kaczkurkin, A.N., Latzman, R.D., Martin, E.A., Nikolaidis, A., Pickering, A.D., Safron, A., Sassenberg, T.A., Servaas, M.N., Smillie, L.D., Spreng, R.N., Tiego, J., Viding, E., & Wacker, J. (2025). Beyond increasing sample sizes: optimizing effect sizes in neuroimaging research on individual differences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 1-12. [PDF]

*Stendel, M.S. & Chavez, R.S. (2023). Beyond the brain localization of complex traits: Distributed white matter markers of personality. Journal of Personality, 91, 1140-1151. [PDF] [OSF]

DeYoung, C.D., Sassenberg, T.A., Abend, R., Allen, T.A., Beaty,R.E., Bellgrove, M.A., Blain, S.D., Bzdok, D., Chavez, R.S., Engel, S.A., Feilong, M., Fornito, A., Genç, E., Goghari,V., Grazioplene, R.G., Hanson, J.L., Haxby, J.V., Kirsten Hilger, K., Homan, P., Joyner, K., Kaczkurkin, A.N., Latzman, R.D., Martin, E.A., Passamonti, L., Pickering, A.D., Safron, A., Servaas, M.N., Smillie, L.D., Spreng, R.N., Tiego, J., Viding, E., & Wacker, J. (preprint). Reproducible brain-behavior associations do not always require thousands of individuals. [PDF]

Grazioplene, R., Chavez, R.S., Rustichini, A., & DeYoung, C.G. (2016). White matter correlates of psychosis-linked traits support continuity between personality and psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125(8), 1135-1145. [PDF]

Arden, R., Chavez, R.S., Grazioplene, R., Jung, R.E. (2010) Neuroimaging creativity: A psychometric view. Behavioural Brain Research, 214(2), 143-156. [PDF]

Jung, R.E., Segall, J.M., Bockholt, H.J., Flores, R.A., Smith, S.M., Chavez, R.S., & Haier, R.J. (2010). Neuroanatomy of creativity. Human Brain Mapping, 31(3), 398-409. [PDF]

Jung, R.E., Grazioplene, R.G., Caprihan, A., Chavez, R.S., & Haier, R.J. (2010). White matter integrity, creativity, and psychopathology: Disentangling constructs with diffusion tensor imaging. PLoS ONE, 5(3). [PDF]

Jung, R.E., Gasparovic, C., Chavez, R.S., Barrow, R.A., Smith, S.M., Caprihan, A., & Yeo, R.A. (2009). Biochemical support for the “threshold” theory of creativity: A magnetic resonance spectroscopy study. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(16), 5319-5325. [PDF]

Jung, R.E., Gasparovic, C., Chavez, R.S., Caprihan, A., Barrow, R., & Yeo, R.A. (2009). Imaging intelligence with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Intelligence, 37(2), 192-198. [PDF]

Health & Addiction

Voelker P., Weible A.P., Niell C.M., Chavez R.S., *Tovar D.T., Rothbart M.K., & Posner M.I. (2021). Evaluating an approach to improving attention networks by theta stimulation. Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 3(1), 17-22. [PDF]

Chen, P.H.A., Chavez, R.S., & Heatherton, T.F. (2017). Structural integrity between executive control and reward regions of the brain predicts body fat percentage in chronic dieters. Cognitive Neuroscience, 8(3), 162-166. [PDF]

Jung, R.E., Chavez, R.S., Flores, R.A., Qualls, C.R., Sibbitt, W., & Roldan, C.A. (2012). White matter correlates of neuropsychological dysfunction in systemic lupus erythematosus. PLoS ONE, 7(1). [PDF]

Jung, R.E., Caprihan, A., Chavez, R.S., Flores, R.A., Sharrar, J., Qualls, C.R., Sibbitt, W., & Roldan, C.A. (2010). Diffusion tensor imaging in neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus, BMC Neurology, 10(65), 1-9. [PDF]

Filbey, F.M., Schacht, J.P., Myers, U.S., Chavez, R.S., & Hutchison, K.E. (2010). Individual and additive effects of the CNR1 and FAAH genes on brain response to marijuana cues. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35, 967-975. [PDF]

Filbey, F.M., Schacht, J.P., Myers, U.S., Chavez, R.S., & Hutchison, K.E. (2009). Marijuana craving in the brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(41), 13016-13021. [PDF]