February 8, 2024
At the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego, CA, Dr. Friesen presented a poster on how socially aversive personality traits predict visual attention. This work was also the honours project of lab RA and honour student Adam Swanson.
June 16, 2022
Dr. Friesen presented a review of his recent research on smiling expressions and trustworthiness judgments at the CPA Social & Personality Section’s preconference in Calgary, Alberta.
February 18, 2022
At the virtual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Dr. Friesen presented a poster on “Visual attention during the first-person shooter task in the Canadian context.” This work was the honours project of lab RA & honours student Inga Christianson.
February 27, 2020
Lab research was presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Friesen gave a poster on “Smiling while Black: False smiles on Black targets are judged as trustworthy because they’re familiar.” Honours student Emma Leppky gave a poster on “Essentialism, genetic ancestry testing, and judgments of group membership claims.”
June 30, 2019
Dr. Friesen was accepted as a fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Fellows must have "evidence of substantial contribution to social psychology as an empirical science."
June 13, 2019
Congratulations to our lab members graduating today, including those who received convocation awards. Inga Christianson received the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for Highest Standing in Arts and the Medal for Achievement in Psychology (Honours). Tessa Bortoluzzi received the Medal for achievement in a 3-year degree program (Biopsychology). Congratulations also to graduates Jenessa Suszynski and Jamie-Lee Vallotton, who completed their honours theses in the lab last year.
May 14, 2019
Two lab honours theses from 2018-19 received accolades from the psychology department.
Inga Christianson received the Ron Norton Prize for best psychology department honours thesis, titled “More Than Meets the Eye: How Target Race Alters Visual Attention During the First-Person Shooter Task.”
Emma Leppky (pictured below) received the inaugural Michael McIntyre Prize for best social sciences presentation at the Psychology Prairie Undergraduate Research Conference, titled “Essentialism and Genetic Ancestry Testing: How We Judge Others.” Award presented by our psychology department chair, Dr. Doug Williams. Emma also received a Canadian Psychological Association award for her thesis, and an Undergraduate Student Research Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences to continue working on this topic over the summer term.
February 11, 2019
Lab research was presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Friesen gave a talk on “Situational influences of trust on intergroup biases in face processing” in a symposium titled The Face of the Other.
Alesha Frederickson, below, presented her honours thesis as a poster titled “Why sweat may equal threat: Women’s perceptions of threat and belonging in gym environments.” Alesha also received a Diversity Undergraduate Travel Award from SPSP.
The article that Troy Campbell and I wrote for Scientific American's website was published in their Winter 2017/18 special collector's print edition - "The Science Behind the Debates".
I was interviewed by The Toronto Star for an article "The Science of Why We Won't Stop Believing" -- part of their series on "The Age of Unreason".
My coauthor Troy Campbell was interviewed about our work on the unfalsifiability of political beliefs in relation to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Why Facts Do Little to Change Political Beliefs
I recently attended the Pathways to Prosperity national conference on immigration in Canada. See this coverage by the UWinnipeg News Centre.
My work has been covered in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and on Voice of America, and on websites like Ars Technica, Science Daily, The Huffington Post, The Pacific Standard, the BPS Research Digest, io9, Science Based Medicine, and New York Magazine's Science of Us.
Along with my co-author Troy Campbell, we have written about our research for Scientific American, Salon, and the SPSP "Character and Context" blog.
My postdoctoral lab's research was recently featured on CBC's The National. Relevant clip starts at 9:02. [Link to the written coverage]
My recent talk at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Long Beach, CA.
Other speakers in our symposium, "The Politics of Inequality and the Inequality of Politics":
Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi (UNC Chapel Hill): "Subjective Socioeconomic Status Shapes Political Preferences"
Michael Kraus (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): "The Undervalued Self: Social Class Rank and Political Action"
Oliver Hauser (Harvard University): "Lack of Awareness of Inequality Leads to Punishment of the Poor"