Alexa Tullett wins Ken Dion SPA Graduate Student Award

We are pleased to announce that PhD Candidate Alexa Tullett has received the Ken Dion Graduate Student Award. The award, which is named after prominent social psychologist and former University of Toronto faculty member, Ken Dion, is given each year to recognize both the research accomplishments and area citizenship of a graduate student in the Social, Personality, & Abnormal area. Alexa received the award this year in recognition of her many research achievements, including winning a SSHRC CGS award, authoring 6 peer-reviewed journal publications (a number in the field's best journals), and her creation and management of the summer philosophy reading group. Congratulations, Alexa!

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Ulrich Schimmack promoted to full professor

Ulrich Schimmack has been promoted to the rank of full professor (effective July 1, 2011). He is serving on the editorial boards of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), Social Psychology & Personality Science (SPPS), Emotion, and Journal of Research in Personality (JRP). He is acting editor of Cognition & Emotion. In 2010, his articles have been cited 140 times in peer reviewed journals. Recent articles showed that moving (typically into a better house) produced lasting improvements in housing satisfaction, but not in life-satisfaction (Nakazato, Schimmack, & Oishi, 2010), and that spouses' life-satisfaction changes in the same direction, which points towards an influence of the family environment on well-being (Schimmack & Lucas, 2010). These studies also exemplify the usefulness of advanced statistical methods (growth modeling, dyadic latent panel analysis) in providing new insights into the determinants of happiness.

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Rimma Teper, Michael Inzlicht, and Elizabeth Page-Gould in the April issue of Psychological Science

Rimma Teper, Michael Inzlicht, and Elizabeth Page-Gould have co-authored a paper, titled "Are we more moral than we think? Exploring the role of affect in moral behavior and moral and moral forecasting," in the April issue of Psychological Science. This paper notes that many studies have examined morality through self-reports from their participants, but asks if people can accurately predict how they would behave during a moral dilemma? Participants were given a math test in which they had an opportunity to cheat. One group completed the test, while another group was shown the problems and asked to predict whether they would cheat. The individuals who completed the test cheated significantly less than the other group predicted they themselves would. Furthermore, this effects was partially mediated by physiological correlates of emotion.

Articles about this research have been published in a number of media outlets, including the US News & World Report, The National Post, and Bloomberg Business Week.

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Shauna Kushner awarded doctoral fellowship from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation

Shauna Kushner was recently awarded a three-year doctoral fellowship from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation. The Ontario Mental Health Foundation offers a limited number of awards for training in research in the mental health field. Congratulations Shauna!

Emily Impett in March issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly

Emily Impett has published a paper in the March issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly titled "Embodiment Feels Better: Girls' Body Objectification and Well-Being Across Adolescence." In a five-year longitudinal study, multivariate latent growth curve modeling was used to test the association between body objectification and both self-esteem and depressive symptoms with data from 587 adolescent girls who began the study at age 13 and completed the study at age 18. Results revealed that body objectification decreased, self-esteem increased, and depressive symptoms remained relatively steady across adolescence. Girls who experienced decreases in body objectification also tended to increase in self-esteem and decrease in depressive symptoms over the course of adolescence, even after accounting for several factors known to be associated with positive youth development including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational achievement, religiosity, and body satisfaction. Directions for future research as well as practical implications for reducing objectification and enhancing girls' well-being are discussed.

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