Nicholas Rule Principal Investigator Dr. Rule is Professor of Psychology and presently serves as Dean of the University of Toronto Mississauga. 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. For more information about Dr. Rule's research interests, please click on the Research link above or browse his Publications.
	POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS
		Hayley Liebenow is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the SPCL at the University of Toronto. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and her B.A. at Wellesley College. Dr. Liebenow's research investigates how prejudice and stereotypes form through person perception. In particular, her studies focus on how sexism and racism manifest through face perception and how this affects marginalized groups' outcomes in the workplace and beyond. When she has a moment of free time, she can be found at the skate park, your local Toronto coffee shop, or catering to her cat (Plum)'s every whim.
		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.
		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.
	GRADUATE STUDENTS
		Emily received her HBSc in Psychology from McGill University and her MA in Psychology from the University of Toronto. Her research examines how membership to marginalized social groups influences social perception at both the target and the perceiver level, with a particular focus on gender as well as the LGBTQ+ community. Elsewhere, she also examines pseudosocial perceptions of generative AI and digitally synthesized voices, including how stereotypes can affect human/AI interaction.
		Mac is a third-year PhD student. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto and received his honours bachelor of science in 2020. He is interested in how and why individuals' identities (e.g., gender) become apparent in the things that they make (such as films and food). His other work examines the factors that inform accurate and biased social inferences from face, and the antecedents of face change over time.
	GRADUATE ALUMNI
	Dr. Laura Tian Molly Sun Prof. Jason Deska Dr. Ravin Alaei Prof. Thora Bjornsdottir Dr. Shelbie Sutherland Prof. Miranda Giacomin Dr. Daniel E. Re Dr. Konstantin O. Tskhay Prof. John Paul Wilson Dr. Zak Witkower
	RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
	Current as of May 2026 Gavin (Tianheng) Zhang (Lab Manager) Emma Barua Adrian Cheng Alice Du Ian Freeburn Isabela Santander Garcia Ryan Ghorise-Elahi Brigid Green Julia Gonsalves Ghazal Janahmad Gahee Lee Chloe Lin Ivy Lei Kimberly Lee Jenny Liu Katherine Liu Ujin Munkh-Itgelt Ayesha Narang Maria Romero Ochoac Lena Shahin Shannon Villeneuve