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Work And Play Lab


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Work And Play Lab


Why does empathy or self-control feel like hard work? Why do people spend their leisure time on social media or getting stoned?

The Work and Play Lab uses methods borrowed from social psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience to understand the nature of the mental effort we use to reach our goals and the nature of leisure activities we do for fun.  The lab’s research includes projects on self-control, motivation, and empathy (work) as well as projects on digital device use, social media, and recreational cannabis use (play). The lab is committed to open and transparent science, which includes publicly posting data and materials, often preregistering studies, and regularly running replication studies.

Work/Play
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About Michael


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About Michael


Michael Inzlicht is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, where he is also cross-appointed as a Professor in the Rotman School of Management. His research mostly focuses on effort and self-control, but he has also become interested in how people spend their leisure time. Michael is passionate about open science.

 
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Publications


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Publications


Recent Publications

Featured
Effort paradox redux: Rethinking how effort shapes social behavior [pdf]

Inzlicht, M., Campbell, A.V., & Saunders, B. (in press). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

A positive empathy intervention to improve well-being on Instagram [PDF]

Depow, G. J., Oldemburdo de Mello, V., & Inzlicht, M. (in press). Emotion.

Access Open Data, Materials, and Preregistrations

Third-party evaluators perceive AI as more compassionate than expert humans [PDF]

Ovsyannikova, D., Oldemburgo de Mello, V., & Inzlicht, M. (2025). Communications Psychology 3, 4

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News


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News


Featured News

News for Front
The Paradox of Hard Work
The Paradox of Hard Work

Why do people enjoy doing difficult things?

“You can imagine that some people are willing to work hard, but go about it from a sense of duty and responsibility,” Inzlicht told me for my New York Times story. “But other people—call them ‘joyful workers’—this is what they live for. This is what gives them purpose. This is what makes them feel important. This is what helps them make the world make sense.” The existence of “joyful workers” suggests that, even if the Effort Paradox applies to everyone, it doesn’t apply equally. Where you sit on the Meaningfulness-of-Effort scale probably reflects a changeable mix of nature and nurture.

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Can you trust DeepSeek? Can AI be your new best friend?
Can you trust DeepSeek? Can AI be your new best friend?

University of Toronto professor Michael Inzlicht wanted to find out who's better at empathic responses: people, or ChatGPT. He explains to CBC Metro Morning how AI won the empathy contest.

Listen Here

She Is in Love With ChatGPT
She Is in Love With ChatGPT

A 28-year-old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex.

Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said people were more willing to share private information with a bot than with a human being. Generative A.I. chatbots, in turn, respond more empathetically than humans do. In a recent study, he found that ChatGPT’s responses were more compassionate than those from crisis line responders, who are experts in empathy. He said that a relationship with an A.I. companion could be beneficial, but that the long-term effects needed to be studied.

“If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, and that’s contributing to loneliness — the very thing we’re trying to solve — that’s a real potential problem,” he said.

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Contact


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Contact


Michael Inzlicht

Department of Psychology
University of Toronto Scarborough
1265 Military Trail
Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4
Canada

Email: michael.inzlicht@utoronto.ca