Lab director
Ramona Bobocel
Ramona received her Ph.D. in psychology from Western Ontario in 1992 and is psychology professor at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on social and organizational justice, with a continuing interest in understanding how people form judgments of fairness and how they cope with unfair treatment. Ramona's research has garnered continuous funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and has been published in leading scientific journals in psychology and management. She has received numerous awards for her contributions, including the Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award. More recently, she was made Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Association for Psychological Sciences, and the Canadian Psychological Association for her sustained scientific contributions. She has served as editor and consulting editor for top journals in her field, and is past president of the Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. In addition to her research, Ramona has consulted with several Canadian organizations to improve fairness in the workplace.
PhD students
Amy Barron
Amy completed her BA (hons.) in Psychology at the University of Calgary and her MASc in Industrial/Organizational psychology at the University of Waterloo. She is currently pursuing her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Ramona Bobocel at the University of Waterloo. Her current research focuses on examining manager explanations of bad news. Her other research interests include: manager responses to sexual harassment claims, gender discrimination, and workplace forgiveness.
Taylor Carroll
Taylor completed her Honours B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Sociology at the University of Guelph. Her Honours Thesis project investigated how perfectionistic employees experience job satisfaction and trust in their supervisor. Taylor is currently working on her MASc in Industrial-Organizational psychology under Ramona’s supervision. Her research considers why leaders might be inconsistent in their fairness behaviours (“fairness variability”) and how leaders’ fairness variability can be mitigated. In general, Taylor’s research interests include organizational justice, leadership, self-regulation, and personality.
Master's students
Iris Xing
Iris completed her Honours BA in Psychology with a minor in Human Resources Management at the University of Waterloo. Her undergraduate thesis investigated individual differences in students' responses to non-instructional factors in Student Evaluations of Teaching. Iris is currently working toward a MASc in Industrial/Organizational Psychology under the supervision of Ramona. Her current research focuses on how overall organizational justice perceptions may negatively influence employees’ voicing behaviours and paradoxically perpetuate workplace mistreatment.
Olha Mendelenko
Olha completed her B.A. (hons.) in Criminal Justice and Law with a minor in Psychology at Carleton University, followed by a Psychology Make-Up Program at the University of Waterloo. As part of the Make-Up program, Olha completed a Psychology Honors Thesis under the supervision of Dr. Ramona Bobocel, where she examined the benefits of leader apology following an interpersonal justice violation. Olha joined the IO MASc program in 2022 and was awarded SSHRC-GSM for her proposal to examine the effects and gender differences of bottom-up mistreatment on mid-level managers.
Recent undergraduate thesis students
Valerie Chen
Valerie completed her BSc in psychology at the University of Waterloo. Her honours thesis examined how gender biases may influence observer reactions to non-forgiving victims. She is currently a research assistant at the Fairness at Work Lab. In the future, Valerie hopes to either pursue graduate studies in psychology or further her interest in the culinary arts.
Chloe Fournier
Chloe recently completed her undergraduate studies in psychology. Her interests are in fairness in the workplace. Her thesis focused on construal level and managers' fairness behaviour. Chloe currently works as a human resources assistant at a recruitment company and hopes to transition into the role of human resources coordinator in the future.
Nadine Ivall Boileau
This is Nadine; she is an amateur baker and a dessert enthusiast. Her interests include strength training and reading fiction literature. Nadine's research topic examines how contextual factors influence managers' fairness behaviour. Currently, she is applying to occupational therapy schools and plans to begin her studies in fall 2019.
Adam Adivi
Adam Adivi is a graduating psychology undergraduate interested in the impact of cultural and individual differences in the workplace. Adam's thesis examines possible explanations for cultural differences in relationship restoration in the context of a negotiation. He is interested in pursuing research and will be applying to graduate programs in I/O Psychology.
Mercedes King
Mercedes is currently working toward completing her BSc in Psychology. She loves to travel and found her passion for research when working as a research assistant in Singapore. Her honours thesis focuses on examining possible paradoxical effects of employee perceptions of organization justice. Mercedes is looking forward to graduating and seeing what comes next.