lab director | postdoc | 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 Nature Human Behaviour, Science Advances, 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 journals Emotion and SPPS, and he is currently Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Inquiry—the premier outlet for theory papers in psychological science. In his free time, he co-hosts the “On Wisdom Podcast,” disseminating scientific insights from psychology, philosophy and cognitive sciences to the general public.
Email: igrossma@uwaterloo.ca
Maksim Rudnev
Postdoc
Maksim Rudnev is a postdoc researcher at the Lab. He studies basic values and moral attitudes in a comparative perspective, as well as methods required for that, namely structural equation, mixture, and multilevel modeling.
Email: maksim.rudnev@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
Neil Wegenschimmel
Graduate student
Neil is a first year graduate student in social psychology with a background in sociology. He is broadly interested in belief in different contexts; religion, extremism, radicalism, polarization, nihilism, media and information consumption, and the effect of digital social life on what we see as being real or true. With Igor Grossman he is examining manifestations of wisdom and intellectual humility in different contexts including adversity, forecasting, prediction, and cultural change. Outside of psychology, Neil writes and reads widely while maintaining a life-long love of music making, vinyl records, literature, travel, and history.
Email: nhwegens@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
Ethan Meyers
Graduate student
Ethan is a fourth year PhD student in cognitive psychology. He is interested in how people work. He is especially interested in the choices they make and how they think about those choices. With Igor Grossmann and Richard Eibach, Ethan has examined how lay people define what "good judgment" means. Ethan also generally enjoys the act of thinking, especially thinking about the philosophy of science of which he has many opinions. For instance, Ethan thinks that the psychological literature is so polluted that mostly everyone would be better off ignoring it completely. He thinks the scientific pursuit would be best served by abolishing peer review, abolishing academic publishing (i.e., move to a "pre-print" only model), and greatly reducing its reliance on government/ public funding. Ethan has become increasingly concerned that Academics have escaped from their ivory tower to share their ideas with the world. He thinks that the academics are much safer in their ivory towers, not for their own protection but everyone else's.
Email: emeyers@uwaterloo.ca
Alexander Walker
Graduate student
Alex is a PhD candidate in Cognitive psychology studying moral inferences, moral narratives, and political polarization. His primary work investigates how strategic and self-serving narratives—for example, those utilizing euphemistic terms (e.g., enhanced interrogation)—bias peoples’ moral impressions. He is interested in how divergent moral narratives (e.g., those existing across political divides) shape peoples’ moral behaviors and impressions and contribute to our increasingly polarized societies. Additionally, Alex and Igor Grossmann have examined the role perceptions of an individual’s predictability play in judgments of their moral character. Currently, he is working with members of the Wisdom and Culture Lab on a multi-year project assessing the psychological impact of forecasting tournaments.
Email: a24walker@uwaterloo.ca
Website: alexandercwalker.com
Suyeong Choi
Lab manager
Suyeong is a third year undergraduate student in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. She loves exploring the whys of human behaviour and enjoys psychology/neuroscience podcasts. In her free time, she likes to discuss ideas, play music, create art, and try something new.
Email: suyeong.choi@uwaterloo.ca
Jennifer Xie
Honours thesis student
Jennifer is 5th year Joint Honours Science and Psychology Arts student, interested in the processing of scientific information and scientific reasoning, and how that relates to dialectical thinking.
Email: jennifer.xie@uwaterloo.ca
Amanda Pileggi
Honours thesis student
Amanda is investigating questions pertaining to lay understandings of reasonable and rational standards of decision making.
Email: amanda.pileggi@uwaterloo.ca
Mishel Alexandrovsky
Visiting research assistant
Mishel is a University of Toronto Research Specialist Student and a part time research assistant at the lab. Her research interests surround autism, morality, and wisdom.
Email: mishel.alexandrovsky@mail.utoronto.ca
Mariam Mazen
Research assistant
Mariam is a third-year Honours Life Science - Psychology student with a minor in Biology. She has a wide range of research interests within the Clinical and Social psychology domains, but specifically, she is interested in how intersectionality contributes to perception and well-being.
Email: mmazen@uwaterloo.ca
Molly Matthews
Research assistant
Molly is a third-year undergraduate student pursuing her BSc in Psychology with a Biology minor at the University of Waterloo. She is passionate about many areas of psychology research and also has an interest in statistics and research methods.
Email: m8matthe@uwaterloo.ca
Hayden Azim Wong
Research assistant
Hayden is a third year psych student with an interest in psychological research and learning about the many ways that wisdom can impact people’s lives.
Email: haydenazwong@hotmail.com
Rachel Kasujja
Research assistant
Rachel is in her final year of Honours Psychology, Research Intensive Specialization, with a minor in Social Development Studies. She is interested in the intersectionality of cultural and clinical perspectives in psychology and is currently completing her Honours Thesis. In her free time, she enjoys reading and writing for her blog!
Email: rnnkasujja@uwaterloo.ca