On Monday, March 24, 2025, Dr. Nick Stagnaro, senior research fellow at Stanford University and postdoctoral researcher at MIT, presented his talk, “Accurate Information Can Substantially and Durably Increase U.S. Republicans’ Beliefs in Election Integrity.”����at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.

You can find more information about Dr. Stagnaro's work and his abstract below:

Abstract: 

Low confidence in the integrity of elections is a growing concern in the US, with particularly low trust levels among individuals on the political right. While this issue appears to be one of an uninformed or misinformed electorate, a common assumption in the social sciences is that providing people with accurate information is unlikely to help in such cases as people ignore or reject evidence that challenges their political beliefs. This is an especially common assumption in the context of contentious issues where partisan identities are strongly activated. To examine the validity of this dominant view, as well as attempt to formulate some solution to the above problem, we develop and test an informational intervention that exposes participants to evidence on election integrity that is highly accurate, balanced, and unbiased. In the days preceding the 2024 general election, we randomly assigned N = 780 Republicans to either the experimental intervention or a control group engaging with general political information. The intervention substantially and durably increased participants’ (1) overall beliefs about the integrity of US elections, (2) retrospective beliefs about the integrity of the 2020 election, and (3) prospective beliefs about the expected integrity of the upcoming 2024 election. A pre-post analysis reveals that individuals in the experimental condition increased their beliefs in election integrity by 10% to 14%, and comparing between conditions reveals large treatment effects (.4 < d < .8). Furthermore, a post-election follow-up shows that the effects persist for at least two weeks and in the face of a Republican presidential win. Overall, this work provides strong evidence that, when administered strategically, information can be a powerful tool to move people’s political beliefs toward the truth.

On Monday, March 17, 2025, Dr. Laura Soter, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at 91��ɫ, presented her talk, “Investigating Obligations to the Self.”��at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.

You can find more information about Dr. Soter's work and her abstract below:

Abstract: 

People feel they have obligations towards other people—but might they also think we can have obligations to ourselves? This possibility has not been thoroughly examined in empirical moral psychology. We explore obligations to the self across six studies. In the first four studies, we find evidence that participants endorse the existence of obligations to the self, showing that not all self-directed acts are seen as mere personal preferences, and show that these judgments do not reduce to perceived obligations to others. In the final two studies, we explore potential mechanisms that distinguish acts judged as self-obligations, focusing on the role of harmfulness to the self.

On Monday, September 30, 2024, Dr. Duygu Gulseren, Assistant Professor of the School of Human Resource Management at 91��ɫ, presented her talk, “Unveiling Inconsistent Leadership: New Perspectives on Measurement and Impact”��at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.

You can find more information about Dr. Gulseren's work and her abstract below:

Abstract:��

Inconsistent leadership is a critical and potentially disruptive form of leadership that significantly impacts employee behaviors and well-being. Traditionally, the concept of inconsistent leadership has been examined through indirect measures, which often emphasize the interplay of various leadership styles and contribute to construct ambiguity. This approach has complicated our understanding of its specific effects on employees.

In this talk, I will present initial results from a study aimed at clarifying the construct and developing a scale for inconsistent leadership. In the first part, I will discuss how our study has identified two distinct factors of inconsistent leadership and provide evidence of their validity. In the second part, I will outline two ongoing studies that build on these findings. These are a longitudinal survey exploring the long-term effects of inconsistent leadership on employee outcomes and a series of an experimental investigations examining the immediate impacts of inconsistent leadership in organizational settings, focusing on employee reactions and interactions. Overall, this talk offers new insights into the nature of inconsistent leadership and its implications for employee outcomes.

On Monday, January 22, 2024, Dr. Winny Shen, Associate Professor of Organization Studies at 91��ɫ, presented her talk "Exploring the Asian American/Canadian Experiences at Work" at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.

You can find more information about Dr. Shen's work and her abstract below:

Abstract:

Exploring the Asian American/Canadian Experience at Work

In this presentation, we will examine the complex experiences faced by Asian American and Canadian workers when navigating their organizations and careers, with a particular emphasis on challenges to attaining and maintaining leadership positions for this group. Key themes covered will include interpersonal versus intrapersonal barriers, within-group heterogeneity or diversity, and intersectionality. Interwoven alongside this empirical program of research, we will also discuss lessons learned for understanding the workplace experiences of other diverse groups and the presenter’s own journey as a diversity and inclusion researcher.  

On Monday, November 20, 2023, Dr. Regina Rini, Associate Professor of Philosophy at 91��ɫ, presented her talk "Morals from Machines" at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.

You can find more information about Dr. Rini's work and her abstract below:

Abstract:

Morals from Machines

Should you turn to a computer program for advice when you face a difficult moral decision? That sounds absurd. But artificial intelligence has done a lot of surprising things lately. Perhaps most surprising of all: it seems to be able to implement the ethical theory of John Rawls, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20^th century. This talk will discuss the Delphi language model, which predicts moral judgments about novel situations based upon machine-learned patterns in actual human moral judgment. I will connect computer science, psychology, and moral philosophy.

Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Reasoning and is Associate Professor of Philosophy at 91��ɫ. Her research focuses on how we navigate shifting norms in public life, particularly in response to technological disruption. Among other topics, she has written about the effects of social media on democratic politics and the significance of machine learning to moral life. In addition to her academic work, she writes the regular ‘Morals of the Story’ column for the Times Literary Supplement. Her most recent book is The Ethics of Microaggression, and she is currently writing a book about certainty and doubt in political life.

On Monday, November 13, 2023, Dr. Fred Duong, postdoctoral fellow of Social and Personality Psychology at University of Toronto, presented his talk ��“Cultivating prosociality: from understanding to application.”��

You can find more information about Dr. Duong's work and his abstract below:

Cultivating prosociality: from understanding to application

My research program is centered on prosociality—the inclination toward thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that benefit others. This presentation will span two lines of my work: an investigation of the meaning and measurement of empathy, and the application of social psychology in enhancing social cohesion.

In my academic work, I investigate empathy. My collaborators find that empathy, though a singular term, encompasses a multitude of meanings and applications. I will outline our findings on how people's lay conceptions of empathy diverge, investigate underlying mechanisms, and highlight measurement challenges to the field.

Transitioning from theory to practice, I will present my contributions as a research fellow with More in Common, a nonpartisan research nonprofit in the U.S. I'll share insights from large-scale quantitative surveys, focus groups, and interventions. We use social psychology to understand and foster social cohesion and healthy civic dialogue.

Additionally, I offer advice and information for those who are interested in using their research skills in mission-oriented organizations.

On Monday, March 27, 2023, Dr. Tessa Charlesworth, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and Harvard University, and incoming professor at the Kellogg School of Management presented her talk titled, “Change in attitudes and stereotypes of social groups.” at the 91��ɫ Social and Personality Colloquium.

You can find more information about Dr. Charlesworth's work and her abstract below:

Change in attitudes and stereotypes of social groups

Navigating the social world – with its wide array of intersecting and interacting social groups – is an impressive feat of human psychology. But perhaps even more impressive is our ability to adapt to an evolving social climate and to update what we think and feel about the groups around us. In this two-part talk, I will introduce my research program focused on this question of when, how, and why we change our attitudes and stereotypes of social groups. In part one, I discuss evidence for contemporary change in attitudes, using data from over 7 million responses of both explicit (self-report) and implicit (indirectly measured) attitudes collected continuously online from 2007 to 2020. Although implicit attitudes had long been thought resistant to change, the current data advance a new perspective: I show that (a) even implicit attitudes are capable of meaningful decreases in bias for some highly prioritized biases (e.g., race, sexuality), and (b) this change spans across people and places. Such an emphasis on widespread, collective change brings us to Part Two, in which I discuss new work tracking historical change in collective, shared representations of 14 social groups through 8 million English-language books across 200 years (1800-2000). The results add nuance to identifying whether, which, and in what ways social group representations have changed historically in stereotype content and valence. Ultimately, through investigations of change across multiple levels of analysis, multiple indicators of attitudes and stereotypes, and multiple group targets, the work deepens our basic and applied understanding of how we change, as individuals, in institutions, and as a broader society.

On Monday, September 26, 2022, Dr. Felix Cheung from University of Toronto gave a great talk at our weekly Social-Personality Brownbag series, titled: "Social and Personality Psychology in Times of War and Conflict."

You can find more information about Dr. Cheung's work and the abstract for his talk below:

Abstract:

The Russo-Ukrainian War has far-reaching consequences for the world. Not only has the War changed life in Ukraine drastically, but it has also led to the prioritization of military spending, the reconsideration of the role of international coalitions, and the additional scrutiny of refugee policies. This talk highlights 4 studies that address these issues using diverse samples across continents (total N = 1,382,294). The first study drew on representative data from 16,404 Ukrainian participants and documented Ukrainians’ historical resilience during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan Protest. The second study showed that diverting public spending towards the military poses a well-being cost to citizens. The third study found both short- and long-term well-being benefits for joining the EU. The fourth study examined the refugee crisis and found no evidence that greater influx of refugees is related to poorer life satisfaction in the host populations. Together, these studies not only introduce new conceptual insights and methodological advances on the psychology of war and conflict but also call for the prioritization of psychological research towards pressing global affairs.