lab director | post doctoral researchers | visiting scholars | graduate students | thesis students | research team
Igor Grossmann, MSc, PhD
Lab director
Igor Grossmann is a social-cognitive scientist studying sound judgment and wisdom across cultures. His work utilizes methods at the intersection of big data analytics, psychophysiology, diary surveys, and experiments. Grossmann studied at the University of Freiburg and at the University of Michigan, where he received his Ph.D. in 2012. He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His work has been published in such outlets as PNAS, Proceedings of the Royal Academy: B, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His contributions have been recognized through numerous awards (e.g., SAGE Young Scholar award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, APA Dissertation Award, USERN Prize for Social Sciences). Grossmann has been an Associate Editor of the journal Emotion, is currently an Associate Editor in SPPS, and co-hosts the “On Wisdom Podcast,” disseminating scientific insights from psychology, philosophy and cognitive sciences to the general public.
Email: igrossma@uwaterloo.ca
Anna Dorfman, PhD
Post-doctoral researcher
Anna Dorfman is studying decision making in various social contexts. Her interdisciplinary research combines psychological theory, economic paradigms, and innovative research methods including experimental games and virtual reality, to explore how people reason and make decisions when facing conflicts between selfish and cooperative goals. Anna received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ben-Gurion University in 2016. She was a postdoctoral researcher in Organizational Behavior at the Coller Faculty Management in Tel Aviv University and a lecturer at Achva Academic College, Israel. Currently, Anna is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Waterloo, working with Dr. Igor Grossmann. She has publications in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and PLoS ONE, and received multiple scholarships (e.g., Interdisciplinary Research scholarship from Ben-Gurion university, post-doctoral scholarship from Tel Aviv University).
Email: anna.dorfman@uwaterloo.ca
Abdo Elnakouri
Graduate student
Abdo is a third year graduate student in social psychology. Broadly, he is interested in how self-regulation interacts with ideology and group processes. Abdo and Igor Grossmann are examining how ecological threats might lead to a widened scope of what is considered immoral. In another line of research with Ian McGregor, Abdo and Igor are exploring what leads to wisdom in religious contexts. When he's not working, Abdo enjoys traveling, learning, listening to music, and spending time with friends and family.
Email: abdo.elnakouri@uwaterloo.ca
Ronda Lo
Graduate student
Ronda Lo is a visiting PhD student from York University. She is broadly interested in how long-term sociocultural experiences (e.g., culture, religion, familial experiences, minority experiences) can fundamentally shape cognitive processes and interact with biology. She is currently working on a project with Igor Grossmann and Richard Eibach on cultural variation in lay beliefs about quantum physics.
Email: rondalo@yorku.ca
Oliver Twardus
Lab manager
Email: ottwardu@uwaterloo.ca
Thesis student
Helen Thomson: how the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way we view society, make judgements and decisions, and reason wisely.
Katherine MacDonald: the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on mental health, specifically life satisfaction.
Sanghamithra Ramani: perceiving cultural diversity in online classrooms, and how this may be related to wise reasoning.
Amanda Pileggi: investigating questions pertaining to lay understandings of reasonable and rational standards of decision making.
Research assistant
Olha Mendelenko: exploring the way leaders can repair relationships with subordinates following justice violations.
Arslan Salikhov: information processing and encoding, neural signaling, and implementation of Artificial Intelligence in psychology and neuroscience.
Sahara Kular: strong interest in forensic psychology.
Mishel Alexandrovsky: passionate about mentoring, advocating for mental health, and psychology research, wisdom and wise reasoning especially.
