Join the Lab
Do you want to volunteer for the Work and Play Lab? Michael Inzlicht accepts new student volunteers from time to time. Interested students should be prepared to volunteer for 8-10 hours per week.
To join the lab, please complete a lab application and submit it with a transcript (unofficial copies are OK) to Dr. Inzlicht’s mailbox in the Psychology office, or slipped under the door of the lab, in room SY162 of the Science Building.
Apply to Grad School
Are you interested in pursuing graduate studies with Dr. Inzlicht at the University of Toronto? Dr. Inzlicht is always on the lookout for self-motivated and hard-working graduate students and he will be accepting one new experimental psychology PhD student for the Fall of 2025; he will not be accepting new clinical MA students for the foreseeable future. Dr. Inzlicht is eager to accept students who have interests in the psychology effort, boredom, motivation, social media, and cannabis.
Benefits of working in the Work and Play Lab include guaranteed funding (including funds for one to two conferences per year), experience in a multidisciplinary lab, and the quality of life conferred by living in the great city of Toronto.
For more information about the lab, please contact Dr. Inzlicht.
If you are interested in attending psychology graduate school, these links may be useful:
> University of Toronto Department of Psychology Graduate Admission Requirements and Application Form
> How to Get In: Your Guide to Applying to Graduate Programs in Psychology
> Pursuing Psychology Graduate School Information Page
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Researchers conducted experiments to investigate the psychological effects of flicking by and fast-forwarding through online videos during moments of downtime
Scrolling through videos on TikTok or YouTube to avert boredom may have a decidedly unintended consequence: It can make people feel more bored, according to the paradoxical findings of a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. People seem increasingly intolerant of it, and Michael Inzlicht has a counterintuitive tip for avoiding boredom: Lean into it. Sit with the discomfort of boredom for a bit before flitting to something else. “If we’re so addicted to escaping boredom, so intolerant of boredom, it would be like a foraging animal going tree to tree, but never searching long enough to see if it bears fruit,” Inzlicht said. “Eventually, that animal will die.”
The struggle for self-control is real, and one many of us are familiar with - but is 'willpower' actually a myth? Psychology professor Michael Inzlicht has long been intrigued by how we curb our less desirable behaviours, and what it is that unites people with 'high self-control'. His research at the University of Toronto's Work and Play Lab also seeks to understand our complicated relationship with effort and empathy - and whether so-called 'empathetic AI' has a place in our future.
Collaborators
- Joshua Aronson, New York University
- Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University
- Elliot Berkman, University of Oregon
- Kirk Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University
- Daryl Cameron, Penn State University
- Belle Derks, Utrecht University
- Jennifer Gutsell, Brandeis University
- Greg Hajcak, Florida State University
- Eddie Harmon-Jones, University of New South Wales
- Jacob Hirsh, University of Toronto
- Cendri Hutcherson, University of Toronto
- Sonia Kang, University of Toronto
- Michael Larson, Brigham Young University
- Lisa Legault, Clarkson University
- Ian McGregor, University of Waterloo
- Marina Milyavskaya, Carleton University
- Sukhvinder Obhi, McMaster University
- Liz Page-Gould, University of Toronto
- Travis Proulx, Cardiff University
- Blair Saunders, University of Dundee
- Brandon Schmeichel, Texas A&M University
- Zindel Segal, University of Toronto
- Alexa Tullett, University of Alabama
University of Toronto
Organizations
- Association for Psychological Science
- Canadian Psychological Association
- Canada Foundation for Innovation
- International Social Cognition Network
- International Society for Research on Emotion
- National Academy of Education
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Social and Affective Neuroscience Society
- Social Psychology Network
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
- Society for Personality and Social Psychology
- Society for Psychophysiological Research
- Spencer Foundation
…This isn’t a relic of a bygone era. The idea that marijuana makes you lazy has been a recurring theme in anti-drug campaigns and remains a widely held belief. Many people still view cannabis users as unmotivated slackers, content to waste their days in a haze of smoke. But is this really true? According to recent research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, it may be little more than a myth.
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