Psychology
Master of Arts
Department of Psychology
UBC’s Department of Psychology is a top-ranked research department in Canada and in the world. Our faculty members, full-time graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows conduct research across the spectrum of psychology, representing eight sub-disciplinary specializations: Behavioural Neuroscience, Clinical, Cognitive Science, Developmental, Health, Quantitative Methods, Social/Personality and Teaching/Learning.
The strength of our graduate programs lie in the highly productive research faculty, well-organized programs of study, extensive opportunities for student-faculty interaction, and rich offering of research specializations. Our faculty are well known for their research expertise in happiness, language acquisition, gambling, child development, gender roles, environmental behaviour, neuroscience, and many other areas of psychology. Our research programs are well funded by major national granting agencies, and our faculty are committed to research excellence and interdisciplinary collaborations within UBC’s Faculties of Medicine, Science and Arts, the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and many other institutions around the world.
Graduate Degree Programs
Research Supervisors
| Name | Research Interests |
|---|---|
| Alden, Lynn | Cognitive processes in the anxiety disorders, Social Anxiety Disorder, adult-onset Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, cognitive-behavior therapy |
| Baron, Andrew | cognitive development, infancy, childhood, adolescence, racism, race, stereotypes, cooperation, bias, innateness, science education, multiculturalism, gender, ethnicity, neuromarketing, attitudes, preferences, psychology |
| Biesanz, Jeremy | personality, Personality, interpersonal perception, accuracy, personality coherence, quantitative methods |
| Birch, Susan | Social perspective taking, social learning, social cognition, imitation, nonverbal behavior, confidence, communication, decision-making, impression formation, child development My primary area of expertise is the study of children and adults’ social perspective taking abilities (i.e., their abilities to reason about other peoples’ mental states–their intentions, knowledge, and beliefs) and how their abilities to take another person’s perspective impacts how they form impressions of others, learn from others, communicate with others, and informs a range of socials. Of particular interest is a) how children make inferences about what is credible information to learn (e.g., how they decide whether someone is a credible source of information based on how confident that person seems) and b) how a widespread bias in perspective taking referred to as ‘the curse of knowledge bias’ (a difficulty reasoning about a more naive perspective as the result of being biased by one’s current knowledge) can impair communication (both written and in person) and decision-making across a range of fields (politics, law, education, economics, medicine, etc.)., Development of language, learning, and social understanding in infants and children |
| Chen, Frances | Health psychology; social connection; social support; stress; coping; conflict and negotiation; hormones; Neuroendocrinology |
| Christoff, Kalina | brain, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, prefronal cortex, fMRI, neuroimaging, neuropsychology, executive functions, problem solving, reasoning, thinking, mind-wandering, attention, consciousness, real-time fMRI, trauma and PTSD, Cognitive and neural basis of human thought, reasoning and problem solving |
| Clark, Luke | Gambling, Problem Gambling, Addiction, Decision-Making, Reward, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms involved in gambling behaviour and disordered gambling |
| Dawson, Samantha | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Interventions for sexual dysfunction; Sexual function and dysfunction in individuals and couples |
| DeLongis, Anita | Psychology and cognitive sciences; social determinants of health; chronic illness; coping; couples; families; health; Health Psychology; marriage; social support; stress |
| Dunn, Elizabeth | Happiness, money and spending decisions, self-knowledge |
| Emberson, Lauren | Learning, Perception (audition, vision, crossmodal or multisensory), Language development, Face/object perception, Impacts of premature birth, Neural connecitivty, fNIRS, Neonatal and Infant development , Early adversity / Risk and resilience , Increasing diversity and representation in the neurosciences , Naturalistic neuroimaging recordings |
| Enns, James | Behavioural neuroscience of reward and motivation; attention; action kinematics; social perception; perceptual development |
| Floresco, Stanley Bogdan | Neural circuits subserving learning and executive functions, behavioural and electrophysiological analyses of limbic-cortical-striatal interactions involved in decision making and behavioural flexibility, animal models of schizophrenia and drug addiction |
| Goetz, Friedrich | Psychology, social and behavorial aspects; Geographical psychology; Causes and consequences of regional personality differences; Mobility and migration; Wanderlust; Courage; Entrepreneurship; Personality development; open science |
| Hall, David Geoffrey | Lexical and conceptual development, semantic development, language acquisition |
| Hamlin, Kiley | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Cognitive development; Moral Judgement and Duty or Obligation Morals; Infant / Child Development; Foundations of Religious, Mystical, Mythical and Moral Thoughts; Infant moral cognition; infant social cognition |
| Handy, Todd | aging and cognition, aging and exercise, cognitive neuroscience, attention, migraine, fMRI, Cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, attention and its impairment in clinical populations, mind wandering, and real-world human behaviour |
| Heine, Steven | Culture and human nature in psychology, culture, how people strive to maintain a sense of meaning in their lives when they encounter anomalies which they are unable to make any sense of, how people understand essences and genetic foundations for human behavior |
| Hewitt, Paul | perfectionism, Therapy Perfectionism, personality vulnerability, depression, suicide in adults and children |
| Hoppmann, Christiane | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Aging Process; Social Aspects of Aging; stress; Health Promotion; social determinants of health; Health and well-being across the adult lifespan and into old age; individual differences in goals |
| Kerns, Connor | assessment and treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD); childhood anxiety and stress-related disorders; trauma-related disorders; Autism; Anxiety; Comorbidity |
| Kim, Eric | Health psychology; Psychosocial, sociocultural and behavioral determinants of health; Epidemiology (except nutritional and veterinary epidemiology); psychological well-being; Purpose in life / Meaning in life; resilience; Optimism / Hope; Health Psychology; Social Epidemiology; Aging |
| Kingstone, Alan | Cognitive sciences; Brain mechanisms of human perception, attention, and behaviour in experimental & everyday situations |
| Klonsky, Elisha | Clinical psychology; Suicide (theory, motivations, transition from suicidal thoughts to attempts); emotion; personality. |
| Laurin, Kristin | Social psychology; Psychology of social class; Political psychology; Rationalization and system justification; Morality |
| LeMoult, Joelle | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; depression and psychobiological responses to stress; understanding how depression develops and unfolds across the lifespan |
| Mikami, Amori | peer relationships; friendships; peer rejection; bullying; social skills training; social networking; Facebook; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; ADHD; children; adolescents, Ways in which a supportive classroom or home environment can help children to make friends, Designing and evaluating interventions that train teachers or parents in strategies to assist children with peer problems |
| Norenzayan, Ara | social psychology; cultural psychology; evolutionary psychology; religion; culture; human cooperation; human universals; thinking across cultures, Psychology of religious thought and behavior, religious diversity, cooperation and conflict, issues of cultural variability and universality in human behavior, and cultural evolution, broadly conceived |
| Odic, Darko | Cognitive development |
| Palombo, Daniela | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Autobiographical memories; Cognitive Science; Non-mnemonic functions |
| Rankin, Catharine | Effects of experience early in development on adult behaviour and the nervous system, adult learning and memory |
| Rights, Jason | R-squared measures and methods for multilevel models; unappreciated consequences of conflating level-specific effects in analysis of multilevel data; delineating relationships between multilevel models and other commonly used models; advancing model selection and comparison methods for latent variable models |
| Savalei, Victoria | Latent variable modeling, especially structural equation modeling (SEM) Development of new statistical methods to handle incomplete data, nonnormal data, and categorical data |
| Schaller, Mark | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Motivations and Emotions; Psychology - Biological Aspects; Evolutionary Psychology; Social Cognition; Social influence; social psychology |
| Schmader, Toni | Stereotype Threat - What Moderates it, Mediates it, and Alleviates it?, The Self-Protective Processes of Psychological Disengagement, Vicarious Shame and Guilt felt for the Actions of Ingroup Members |
| Shariff, Azim | Psychology of Religion; Evolutionary Psychology; Cultural Evolution; Moral Psychology; Emotion; social psychology; Cross Cultural Psychology; Motivational Psychology; Philosophy of Religion; Human-technology interactions; Ethics of automation (self driving cars) |
| Silverberg, Noah | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Cognitive rehabilitation; Concussion; Functional neurological disorder; Implementation Science; Metacognition; Neuropsychological assessment methods; Psychosocial determinants of health in neurological disorders; Traumatic Brain Injury |
| Sin, Nancy | Psychology and cognitive sciences; social determinants of health; stress; Social Aspects of Aging; Health Promotion; Lifestyle Determinants and Health; Adult development and aging; cardiovascular disease; depression; Emotions; Health behaviours; Stress processes; Well-being |
| Snyder, Jason | plasticity, learning, memory, stress, mental health, emotional behaviour |
| Soma, Kiran | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Zoology; Behavior; Biological Behavior; Endocrinology; Neuroendocrine Diseases; Neuronal Communication and Neurotransmission; Neuronal Systems; neuroscience; stress |
| Todd, Rebecca | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Human Cognition and Emotion; Neurophenomenology and participatory sensemaking; Dance as a laboratory for interactive cognition; cognition; Emotional learning; Human Neurocognitive processes underlying all of the above; Learning and Memory; Motivation, Emotions and Rewards |
| Tracy, Jessica | emotion, self-conscious emotions (pride, Emotion, nonverbal expression, self-conscious emotions (eg, pride, shame), the self, self-esteem, narcissism, trends in psychological science |
| Ward, Lawrence | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; brain plasticity and cultural learning; cognition; cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, perception, memory, spontaneous thought; computational neuroscience of neural oscillations, brain regional networks; effects of noise in the brain; electrophysiology; Neuronal Systems; stochastic processes |
| Werker, Janet | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Bilingualism and Multilingualism; Critical Periods; Language Acquisition; Language Acquisition and Development; Language and Cognitive Processes; Multisensory Processing; Plasticity; Psycholinguistics; Psychology - Biological Aspects; speech perception; Speech and Language Development Disorders |
| Winstanley, Catharine | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Addiction; Behavioural neuroscience; decision making; Gambling disorder; Impulsivity; Mental Health and Society; Neuronal Systems; Neuropharmacology; Computational neuroscience; Traumatic Brain Injury |
| Woody, Sheila | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Mental Health and Society; Anxiety; cognition; Community Health / Public Health; Specific Social Services (Clientele); Hoarding |
| Zhao, Jiaying | Natural environment sciences; Psychology and cognitive sciences |
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