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? While Dr. Inzlicht is always on the lookout for self-motivated and hard-working graduate students, he will not be accepting new students for the Fall of 2024. 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
Filter By Keyword
- neuroscience
- self-control
- emotion
- ego depletion
- motivation
- cognitive control
- ERN
- anterior cingulate cortex
- prejudice
- effort
- stigma
- empathy
- stereotype threat
- replication
- meaning
- self-regulation
- uncertainty
- decision making
- meta science
- religion
- education
- experience sampling
- morality
- acceptance
- fatigue
- cognitive dissonance
- mindfulness
- political psychology
- emotion regulation
- prosociality
Latest Tweets
News
It’s probably all too familiar. Against your best intentions, you find yourself reaching for a late-night snack again. You snap at a colleague who didn’t really say anything wrong. You find excuses so that your daily run becomes a biweekly one. You’re convinced you don’t want to behave that way anymore, but here you are, doing it again. Psychologist Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto has long been fascinated by how we keep ourselves in check — or don’t — whether you call that willpower, self-control or something else.
But sometimes—whether it’s running a marathon, climbing a mountain, or assembling furniture—we willingly choose difficulty over ease. Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, calls this the effort paradox. While we often eschew hard work, other times we value it, viewing things as more rewarding if we have to work for them. We hike mountains even though we could see the same view by gondola and willingly spend more on furniture we put together than on preassembled pieces. “Both things seem to exist at once: we avoid effort, we also seem to like it,” says Inzlicht.
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
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.
Listen to on-air interview on Radio New Zealand