News

Holly’s paper on meta-perceptions accepted at PSPB You could say it’s been a long time coming–it started out as her MA thesis! Nick, who was one of Holly’s undergraduate mentors at that time, is also a co-author. Congrats to both!

Dissertation award for Gordon Heltzel Senior lab member Gordon Heltzel selected for a dissertation award from the Psychology of Technology Institute.

Will is a (jolly good) Fellow! Will Jettinghoff scores a coveted summer fellowship at UBC’s Data Science for Social Good program. Can’t wait to see what he brings back to share!

Rookie Magicians pen first-author commentary Relative lab newbies Irein Thomas and Nick Kay have their commentary accepted at Behavioral and Brain Sciences. It’s about how our moral psychology steers us away from big systemic solutions to big systemic problems. (Also these two are so collaborative they even decided to share first authorship!)

Lab gets into Registered Reports In the last month the lab has had two Registered Reports accepted at JESP. This means the journal has promised to publish the paper BEFORE any of us have seen the results from the planned study. Yay open science! And congratulations to first authors Holly Engstrom and Cindel White.

A CPA reunion! This month Kristin will give an invited talk at CPA along with fellow U Waterloo alumnus Justin Friesen, fellow lower mainlander Yuthika Girme, and personality psychology legend Kibeom Lee.

Off to Duck! This month Kristin is off to the Duck Conference on Social Cognition for the first time. Should be an intense and immersive experience!

Dr. Rachele Benjamin brilliantly defends thesis! Lab member Rachele Benjamin had a successful thesis defence this week. Audience members and supervisors alike wept with pride. Dr. Benjamin celebrated with DL chicken.

Heading to SPSP Lab members at SPSP this week presenting their awesome work on social class (Holly), politics (Irein, Gordon, Holly) and motivated cognition (Will).

Holly Engstrom selected to go to UK conference Holly was just invited to attend a small group conference on socioeconomic disparities in educational settings. Congrats Holly, and enjoy London!

JPSP accepts our paper on democracy Rachele Benjamin, part-time magician, has a portion of her PhD thesis accepted at social psychology’s premier outlet. Congrats Rachele, this important work has been years in the making! Preprint here.

Magicians gather for a picnic All available lab members gathered at Kits Pool for cookies, juice, and a frank conversation about applying for grad school. So good to finally meet the lab members who joined during Covid!

First undergrad at a conference! This weekend APS happened virtually. Karyn Huang, who joined the lab after taking Dr. Laurin’s 218 stats class, presented a poster! Sure, sure: Holly chaired a symposium (and is chairing another one next month at CPA), but guys: Our undergrads are getting famous!

Two new grad students to begin in Fall 2021! Or is it 1 and 1/3… Irein Thomas comes to us from Knox College, while Nick Kay comes to us from the position of lab manager, and will be also working with Dr. Shariff and Dr. Schaller. Welcome these two new magicians!

Gordon gets a psych science! Gordon’s MA thesis, plus a bit (a lot) of extra work, was accepted for publication this week at psych science. A major accomplishment that I hope he’s proud of. Preprint here.

SPSP was online and it was… ok? Holly chaired a symposium and Gordon gave a talk, and learned they prefer speaking directly to humans rather than to themselves.

Tri-generational machine learning Dr. Laurin, grad student Holly, and undergraduate student Karyn are taking a machine learning course together. Dr, Laurin is finding the most difficult aspect to be trying to use the group Slack.

A magician visits the world of management Holly gave a couple of talks at the Academy of Management this weekend. Virtually, thanks to Covid–but people left online comments so at least we know some folks watched!

Dr. Laurin co-edits special issue of Current Opinion on political ideology With John Jost and Eran Halperin. So many quality contributions from amazing authors, check it out here.

SPSP 2020: Travelling with extra hand sanitizer The lab ventured to New Orleans for SPSP–talks by Gordon and Holly, a poster by Will and by part-time magician Kate Guan. For Dr. Laurin, a memorable fried chicken sandwich.

Holly scores a SSHRC Doctoral student Holly Engstrom has earned herself a prestigious CGS-D. Way to go Holly!

New paper on corporate morality With former students Arthur Jago and Tamar Kreps. Check out the publications page to find it!

MAGIC in Portland The lab flew, drove and trained to Portland this weekend for SPSP–Holly, Gordon and Will all presented posters, Holly spoke at the Justice and Morality pre-conference, and Dr. Laurin showcased Gordon’s work as part of a symposium. Main takeaway: Portland is a really fun city.

New role for Dr. Laurin As of today she is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology! We’ll see if she’s up to the task.

Students’ first paper! Congratulations to Holly and Adam on their first accepted academic paper! Look for it in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Dr. Laurin receives APS’ Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions She stumbled her way through a couple of minutes of thank-yous at the ceremony but managed to not fall off the stage!

And that’s a wrap! This week the lab closed out a fun and productive year with a pizza party / game of Jeopardy! where I think the grad students and RAs alike learned a lot about each other, the lab director, and UBC’s psych department more generally.

New lab addition! The MAGIC lab wishes to announce the arrival of Will Jettinghoff, in September 2018. Future advisers Kristin Laurin and Azim Shariff (UBC’s newest social / personality hire) couldn’t be more thrilled.

SPSP success! This weekend the lab traveled to Atlanta, GA, to share our research with social and personality psychologists from around the world. Kristin spoke at the political psychology and social cognition preconferences, while Gordon, Adam and Holly presented posters.

chips + chopsticks = no more greasy keyboard! #thingsilearnfrommygradstudents #rufflesalldressed

MAGIC victory! The MAGIC lab came away with a much-deserved victory in a holiday bake-off vs. UBC’s Emotion and Self Lab. The good guys came away with the prize for Best Flavour, Best Narrative, and shared the prize for Best Visual. Admittedly, we did lose Best Overall. Great work, everyone!

Dr. Laurin named SAGE Young Scholar Given by the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, the SAGE Young Scholar Award recognizes “outstanding young researchers in personality and social psychology”. She shares the 2018 honour with Mark Brandt, Molly Crockett, Michael Kraus, Nour Kteily, Ryne Sherman, Erica Slotter, and Josh Tybur.

Dr. Laurin named CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar Chosen from a pool of 500 applicants along with 14 other emerging scholars, each to join one of CIFAR‘s interdisciplinary programs. Kristin will join the Successful Societies program to work on the problem of social inequality.

MAGIC lab featured as lab of the month Read more about the MAGIC lab featured on the UBC Psychology website  

Lab hike with our sister labs in the MECC cluster Most of the lab was out today scaling Lynn Peak along with the other members of the MECC lab cluster–the Heine lab, the Norenzayan lab, and the Schaller lab. We forgot to take a picture at the summit…

First lab meeting of 2017/2018 The MAGIC lab got together to eat scones and discuss a working paper on motivation and SES. Great start to the academic year!

New grad students in the lab! Today marks the official first day of school for new grad students Adam Alic, Holly Engstrom, and Gordon Heltzel. Excited to see what these three will do!

Lab director wins ISCON early career award Dr. Laurin has received the early career award from the International Social Cognition Network! She shares this honour with Dr. Ed O’Brian, and both will be presenting their work at SPSP’s Social Cognition preconference in March in Atlanta.

Meet Dr. Kristin Laurin, Director of the MAGIC Lab at UBC Dr. Kristin Laurin, Director of the MAGIC Lab, joined UBC’s Department of Psychology on July 1, 2016. Prior to this she was Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In this Q&A, she shares the questions she tries to answer in her research, her motto, and what she does when […]