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, 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.  

Congratulations are also in order for Ronda Lo who was awarded the 2023 Sandra Pyke Award, which is given to students who demonstrate graduate student excellence!

Finally, 11 people represented 91��ɫ during the first YUTSPA poster session: Zoe Fargnoli Brown, Courtney Chan, Katarina Kovacevic, Ronda Lo, Kunalan Manokara, Stephanie Raposo, Miranda Too, Hannah Tran, Eric Tu, Kai Wen Zhou. and Erik Allen

Amazing job, everyone!

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, February 13, 2023, Dr. Jessica Maxwell from McMaster University joined us for an early Valentine's Day at our weekly Social-Personality Brownbag series by presenting her talk: “Let's��talk��think about sex: Applying Social Cognition Concepts to Sexual Relationships”.

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

Abstract:

Let's talk think about sex: Applying Social Cognition Concepts to Sexual

Our close relationships are vital to our overall health and well-being, and the quality of our sexual relationships is an important component of a happy romantic relationship. In this talk, I illustrate the utility of applying social cognition concepts (including implicit theories and biased perceptions) to understand how sex affects our relational, and overall well-being. Specifically, I introduce the Dual Process Sexual Evaluation Model to explain how positive sexual experiences may lead to subsequent positive relationship evaluations, and the critical moderating role of motivational factors in this process. I will discuss factors that buffer normative declines in couples' sexual relationships, and how individual differences shape the role sexual satisfaction plays in life satisfaction. Overall, this talk will shed light on how the sexual aspect of couples' relationships may contribute to couples' well-being.

Dr. Rachele Benjamin

Dr. Rachele Benjamin is a Senior Design Researcher at TD and received her PhD in Social Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Oriana Vaccarino

Dr. Oriana Vaccarino is a Senior Manager and National Equity and Belonging Methodology Lead at KPMG’s People and Change Advisory practice. She completed her PhD in Applied Social Psychology at the University of Guelph and her Masters in Medical Science Research at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Marina Rain

Dr. Marina Rain is a Behavioural Economics Manager at Sun Life��and received her PhD in Social-Personality Psychology from 91��ɫ.

Thanks to all our speakers for a fantastic, informative session!