Dr. Rule is a Professor of Psychology and presently serves as Vice-Provost, Academic Programs. He completed Ph.D. and M.S. degrees at Tufts University and an A.B. at Dartmouth College and held a Tier-II Canada Research Chair from 2010-2020. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars and has received a number of awards, including early career awards from the International Social Cognition Network, International Academy for Intercultural Research, Ministry of Research and Innovation of Ontario, as well as the Sage Young Scholars Award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology. He has served in various administrative roles across the University of Toronto and editorial roles in his field, including his current position as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and 2027 President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. For more information about Dr. Rule's research interests, please click on the Research link above or browse his Publications.

Kelsey Neuenswander is a postdoctoral fellow in the SPCL at the University of Toronto. She earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles and B.A. degrees at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Neuenswander’s research investigates how people perceive others from brief auditory or visual cues, and how these perceptions affect outcomes like stereotyping and prejudice. She is particularly interested in how vocal cues communicate information about individuals (e.g., gender, age) and groups (e.g., threat), and how accurately people perceive these cues.

Publications    Kelsey's Website

Arin Korkmaz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Social Perception and Cognition Lab (SPCL) at the University of Toronto. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. Arin's research focuses on impression formation, impression updating, and their evaluative and behavioral consequences. He is particularly interested in whether initial impressions can re-emerge after people have effectively changed their minds about others, and how lay beliefs about change shape impression updating.

Publications

Mac's research focuses on how people infer others' identity and status from subtle cues in their physical appearance, and from the things they create, select, and display to others.His work aims to understand how people judge each other from cues (both within and outside of their control) and how these judgments shape social and economic outcomes. Primarily, he examines how perceivers use these subtle cues to form impressions across a range of creative contexts, and how targets leverage the same cues to communicate valid information about their gender to others.

Publications    Mac's Website

Maria graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She is the current lab manager for the Social Perception and Cognition Lab and is a recipient of the 2026 University of Toronto Excellence Award. Her research interests focus on the role of perceiver effects in social perception, including how our experiences and social memberships shape social judgements.

Emma Barua is a fourth-year Psychology and Public Health student at the University of Toronto. She is a volunteer research assistant in the Social Perception and Cognition Lab. Her research interests include mental health, social cognition, health equity, and understanding how first impressions influence social interactions.

Hi! I’m a third-year undergraduate student double majoring in Psychology and Global Health. My research interests are social cognition, perception, and the ways people form impressions and make judgments about others and the environment. Working in the SPCL has given me the opportunity to explore these interests while gaining valuable research experience.

Ujin is a third-year student double majoring in Statistics and Psychology. Her research interests broadly lie in investigating the social, cognitive and neural mechanisms behind aesthetic perception, and its relation to impression formation and judgment-making at the personal and sub-personal level. There are a multitude of external information and internal processes that influence what (and who!) we find aesthetically pleasing. Ujin is currently focused on dissecting how and why these judgments so heavily inform the manner in which we interact with these objects and individuals.

I joined the SPCL for an ROP in my third year of undergrad, and I am so incredibly grateful for all the opportunities it has afforded me. I have learned so much, and now, even after I graduated, I am working on my own research project. If you are considering joining a lab to get psychology research experience, I highly recommend the SPCL!

Hi! My name is Shannon and I'm a fourth-year undergrad studying Neuroscience, Psychology, and Nutritional Sciences. I'm interested in social cognitive neuroscience and find topics related to identity representation, social learning, impression formation, and decision-making particularly fascinating!

Hi! I'm a 3rd year psychology and philosophy double major, and I'm working as an ROP student in the lab. My current research interests are how we make moral judgments and what allows us to update/change those judgments.

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