lab director | postdoc | graduate students | thesis students | research team | alumni
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
Kamil Izydorczak
Postdoc
Kamil is a postdoctoral researcher involved in the "Forecasting Human Welfare" project. He is a social psychologist. His main interests are bias in interpersonal and intergroup comparisons. He is also skilled in data analysis and visualization. He is an avid proponent and practitioner of open science, as well as an aficionado of meta-science and philosophy of science. As part of the Forecasting Human Welfare project, he is investigating the role of political polarization in people's views of the future of the world. He loves spending time with his family, ideally playing games (RPG, video, board games, even sports ;)). In addition, his long-time passion is music, especially playing his first love: the guitar.
Email: kizydorczak@swps.edu.pl
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
Niyati Kachhiya Patel
Graduate student
Niyati is a first-year master's student in social psychology. Broadly, she is interested in many topics such as wisdom, well-being, and mindfulness. She is specifically interested in training wisdom and examining whether wisdom helps individuals navigate life changes more effectively. In her spare time, she likes to read, watch movies, and pursue creative hobbies like dancing, writing poetry and blogs.
Email: nkachhiyapatel@uwaterloo.ca
Jackson Smith
Graduate student
Jackson is a PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology. He studies the psychological and relational consequences of (childhood) trauma and adversity, family processes in contexts of stress, and multisystemic resilience. He is particularly interested in applying a complex systems framework to understand psychological and relational processes using psychometric network analysis. Jackson’s work with Igor Grossmann examines the relationship between wisdom and adversity at multiple levels of analysis.
Email: jackson.smith@uwaterloo.ca
Peter Diep
Incoming Graduate student
Peter is an incoming first-gen MA graduate student under Dr. Grossmann’s supervision for Fall 2024, but is currently employed at the lab as a research assistant to support various research projects in the interim. His primary research interests are the metacognitive and social cognitive processes of wise reasoning, the application of wise reasoning, in addition to the study of meta-science practices in wisdom research and more broadly, social psychology research. Secondary to these interests is examining social connection through a predictive processing/active inference lens and determining where and when social synchrony does/does not apply in socially connecting. As an early career researcher, he is eager to learn new data analysis methods, master rigorous research practices, and develop the critical mindset necessary to support rebuilding trust in the scientific enterprise. More importantly, he aims to learn from the many blunders and mistakes he will make along his scientific journey so that he might one day be “competent”. Outside of science, he spends the rest of his time maintaining peace between his cats (Bella and Nala), reading books, and playing games.
Email: pndiep@uwaterloo.ca
Molly Matthews
Lab manager
Molly is a fourth-year undergraduate student pursuing her BSc in Psychology with minors in Biology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. She is passionate about many areas of psychology research and also has an interest in statistics and research methods. Molly also enjoys playing sports and watching true crime documentaries.
Email: m8matthe@uwaterloo.ca
Hoda Aligoodarz
Research Assistant
Hoda is a research assistant and has background in computer engineering. She is exploring the application of machine learning and natural language processing techniques in content analysis. As hobbies and interests, she enjoys watercolor painting, reading novels, traveling, and gathering with friends and family.
Email: hoda.goodarz@uwaterloo.ca
Mo Pabla
Research Assistant
Mo has a Bachelor of Science in psychology and is a research assistant for the Wisdom and Culture lab. She is interested in decision-making and cognitive biases. In her free time, she enjoys reading and listening to history podcasts.
Email: mk2pabla@uwaterloo.ca
BingSen Wang
Research Assistant
BingSen is graduating from Wilfrid Laurier University this year with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Psychology program (research specialist concentration). He would like to explore the next step in a counselling psychology-related program and then pursue a clinical PsyD program after. In his leisure time, he plays fingerstyle acoustic guitar and tennis to take a break from studying.
Email: wang3230@mylaurier.ca
Lukas Salib
Research Apprentice
Lukas is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo pursing a BA in psychology. He is interested in social phenomena and how people's experiences influence them. He is an artist on the side, and has an interest in existentialist philosophy (his favourite philosopher is Jean-Paul Sartre). In his free time he usually reads, breaks-down music lyrically and plays Trading Card Games like Magic and the Gathering with locals.
Email: lsalib@uwaterloo.ca
Kevin Chen
Visiting Research Assistant
Kevin is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing a BA in Psychology and BS in Economics. He is interested in judgment and decision making in business contexts, and he enjoys watching YouTube documentaries in his free time.
Email: kvnchen@sas.upenn.edu
Alexander Walker
Alumnus
Alex is doing his post-doc at Brown. He is a 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
Alexander Stavropoulos
Alumnus
Alex is a fourth-year biomedical science student studying at the University of Waterloo. He loves exploring the applications of science and technology in improving wellness and productivity. He is fascinated by the pursuit of understanding wisdom and is interested in finding how we can apply artificial intelligence to help us solve the problems of today.
Email: a2stavropoulos@uwaterloo.ca