Michael Inzlicht

Last updated
Michael Inzlicht
Born(1972-06-20)June 20, 1972
Alma mater Brown University
McGill University
Scientific career
Fields Social Psychology
Neuroscience
Cognitive Sciences
Institutions University of Toronto
Wilfrid Laurier University
New York University

Michael Inzlicht is a social psychologist and neuroscientist, working as a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Although he has published papers on the topics of prejudice, academic performance, and religion, his most recent interests have been in the topics of self-control, where he borrows methods from affective and cognitive neuroscience to understand the underlying nature of self-control, including how it is driven by motivation. [1]

Contents

In the early 2000s, he and his colleagues claimed to demonstrate that small, seemingly benign characteristics of an environment could play a large role in determining how stereotyped groups perform on academic tests. They found, for example, that the number of men in a small group could determine whether women succeeded (fewer men) or failed (more men) a math test. The claimed phenomenon is known in psychology as stereotype threat. [2] [3] However, in later years he suggested that work on stereotype threat might not be replicable. [4] [5]

In his later work, Inzlicht studied self-control and the related concepts of cognitive control and executive function (mental processes that allow behavior to vary adaptively depending on current goals). Much of his work explores the building blocks of control, including its neural, cognitive, emotional, and motivational foundations. [6] [7] [8] He also explores how self-control can be influenced by various cultural and situational factors, including mindfulness meditation, [9] quality of motivation, [10] religious belief, [11] and stigmatization. [12] Some of his work uses an interdisciplinary approach, which combines neuroimaging, cognitive reaction time measurement, physiological techniques, and behavioral techniques to understand and explain social behaviour. [8] [13]

Inzlicht is a vocal advocate for open science reform. [14] In addition to criticizing the status quo and the replication crisis in psychology, [15] [16] [17] he has expressed doubts about the replicability of his own past scientific work, [18] [19] such as his research on ego depletion. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive bias</span> Systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality.

Moral psychology is the study of human thought and behavior in ethical contexts. Historically, the term "moral psychology" was used relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development. This field of study is interdisciplinary between the application of philosophy and psychology. Moral psychology eventually came to refer more broadly to various topics at the intersection of ethics, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Some of the main topics of the field are moral judgment, moral reasoning, moral satisficing, moral sensitivity, moral responsibility, moral motivation, moral identity, moral action, moral development, moral diversity, moral character, altruism, psychological egoism, moral luck, moral forecasting, moral emotion, affective forecasting, and moral disagreement.

Mindfulness is the cognitive skill, usually developed through meditation, of sustaining meta-attentive awareness towards the contents of one's own mind in the present moment. Mindfulness derives from sati, a significant element of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and is based on Chan, Guān, and Tibetan meditation techniques. Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions describe what constitutes mindfulness, such as how perceptions of the past, present and future arise and cease as momentary sense-impressions and mental phenomena. Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Joseph Goldstein, Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Richard J. Davidson.

Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group. It is theorized to be a contributing factor to long-standing racial and gender gaps in academic performance. Since its introduction into the academic literature, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology.

Ego depletion is the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon conscious mental resources that can be taxed to exhaustion when in constant use with no reprieve. When the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired, which would be considered a state of ego depletion. In particular, experiencing a state of ego depletion impairs the ability to control oneself later on. A depleting task requiring self-control can have a hindering effect on a subsequent self-control task, even if the tasks are seemingly unrelated. Self-control plays a valuable role in the functioning of the self on both individualistic and interpersonal levels. Ego depletion is therefore a critical topic in experimental psychology, specifically social psychology, because it is a mechanism that contributes to the understanding of the processes of human self-control. There have both been studies to support and to question the validity of ego-depletion as a theory.

Susan Tufts Fiske is an American psychologist who served as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. She is a social psychologist known for her work on social cognition, stereotypes, and prejudice. Fiske leads the Intergroup Relations, Social Cognition, and Social Neuroscience Lab at Princeton University. Her theoretical contributions include the development of the stereotype content model, ambivalent sexism theory, power as control theory, and the continuum model of impression formation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Effects of meditation</span> Surveys & evaluates various meditative practices & evidence of neurophysiological benefits

The psychological and physiological effects of meditation have been studied. In recent years, studies of meditation have increasingly involved the use of modern instruments, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, which are able to observe brain physiology and neural activity in living subjects, either during the act of meditation itself or before and after meditation. Correlations can thus be established between meditative practices and brain structure or function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereotype</span> Generalized but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing

In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. A stereotype does not necessarily need to be a negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative.

The concept of motor cognition grasps the notion that cognition is embodied in action, and that the motor system participates in what is usually considered as mental processing, including those involved in social interaction. The fundamental unit of the motor cognition paradigm is action, defined as the movements produced to satisfy an intention towards a specific motor goal, or in reaction to a meaningful event in the physical and social environments. Motor cognition takes into account the preparation and production of actions, as well as the processes involved in recognizing, predicting, mimicking, and understanding the behavior of other people. This paradigm has received a great deal of attention and empirical support in recent years from a variety of research domains including embodied cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology.

Cultural neuroscience is a field of research that focuses on the interrelation between a human's cultural environment and neurobiological systems. The field particularly incorporates ideas and perspectives from related domains like anthropology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to study sociocultural influences on human behaviors. Such impacts on behavior are often measured using various neuroimaging methods, through which cross-cultural variability in neural activity can be examined.

A number of studies have found that human biology can be linked with political orientation. This means that an individual's biology may predispose them to a particular political orientation and ideology or, conversely, that subscription to certain ideologies may predispose them to measurable biological and health outcomes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attentional control</span> Individuals capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore

Attentional control, commonly referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex, attentional control and attentional shifting are thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Cuddy</span> American psychologist

Amy Joy Casselberry Cuddy is an American social psychologist, author and speaker. She is a proponent of "power posing", a self-improvement technique whose scientific validity has been questioned. She has served as a faculty member at Rutgers University, Kellogg School of Management and Harvard Business School. Cuddy's most cited academic work involves using the stereotype content model that she helped develop to better understand the way people think about stereotyped people and groups. Though Cuddy left her tenure-track position at Harvard Business School in the spring of 2017, she continues to contribute to its executive education programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecilia Heyes</span> British psychologist (born 1960)

Cecilia Heyes is a British psychologist who studies the evolution of the human mind. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College, and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy, and President of the Experimental Psychology Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanisms of mindfulness meditation</span>

Mindfulness has been defined in modern psychological terms as "paying attention to relevant aspects of experience in a nonjudgmental manner", and maintaining attention on present moment experience with an attitude of openness and acceptance. Meditation is a platform used to achieve mindfulness. Both practices, mindfulness and meditation, have been "directly inspired from the Buddhist tradition" and have been widely promoted by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to have a positive impact on several psychiatric problems such as depression and therefore has formed the basis of mindfulness programs such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based pain management. The applications of mindfulness meditation are well established, however the mechanisms that underlie this practice are yet to be fully understood. Many tests and studies on soldiers with PTSD have shown tremendous positive results in decreasing stress levels and being able to cope with problems of the past, paving the way for more tests and studies to normalize and accept mindful based meditation and research, not only for soldiers with PTSD, but numerous mental inabilities or disabilities.

Metacognitive therapy (MCT) is a psychotherapy focused on modifying metacognitive beliefs that perpetuate states of worry, rumination and attention fixation. It was created by Adrian Wells based on an information processing model by Wells and Gerald Matthews. It is supported by scientific evidence from a large number of studies.

Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.

Jonathan B. Freeman is an American psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Columbia University. He is best known for his work on the neuroscience of person perception and social cognition, as well as mouse-tracking methodology in cognitive science. His research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying split-second social judgments and their impact on behaviour.

Affect labeling is an implicit emotional regulation strategy that can be simply described as "putting feelings into words". Specifically, it refers to the idea that explicitly labeling one's, typically negative, emotional state results in a reduction of the conscious experience, physiological response, and/or behavior resulting from that emotional state. For example, writing about a negative experience in one's journal may improve one's mood. Some other examples of affect labeling include discussing one's feelings with a therapist, complaining to friends about a negative experience, posting one's feelings on social media or acknowledging the scary aspects of a situation.

An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy where it might otherwise be expected to occur. Empathy gaps may occur due to a failure in the process of empathizing or as a consequence of stable personality characteristics, and may reflect either a lack of ability or motivation to empathize.

References

  1. Professional Profile: Michael Inzlicht.
  2. APA Online: College women underperform on tests when in the minority.
  3. Inzlicht, Michael; Ben-Zeev, Talia (2000). "A threatening intellectual environment: Why females are susceptible to experiencing problem-solving deficits in the presence of males". Psychological Science. 11 (5): 365–371. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.24.1847 . doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00272. PMID   11228906. S2CID   2887128.
  4. Stereothreat , retrieved 2018-03-23
  5. Michael Inzlicht (2024-12-18). "Revisiting Stereotype Threat". Substack.
  6. Saunders, Blair; Milyavskaya, Marina; Inzlicht, Michael (2015). "What does cognitive control feel like? Effective and ineffective cognitive control is associated with divergent phenomenology". Psychophysiology. 52 (9): 1205–1217. doi:10.1111/psyp.12454. PMID   26041054. S2CID   206286673.
  7. Inzlicht, Michael; Schmeichel, Brandon (2012). "What is ego depletion? Toward a mechanistic revision of the resource model of self-control". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 7 (5): 450–463. doi:10.1177/1745691612454134. PMID   26168503. S2CID   3899310.
  8. 1 2 Inzlicht, Michael; Bartholow, Bruce; Hirsh, Jacob (2015). "Emotional foundations of cognitive control". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 19 (3): 126–132. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.01.004. PMC   4348332 . PMID   25659515.
  9. Teper, Rimma; Segal, Zindel; Inzlicht, Michael (2013). "Inside the mindful mind: How mindfulness enhances emotion regulation through improvements in executive control". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 22 (6): 449–454. doi:10.1177/0963721413495869. S2CID   146587497.
  10. Legault, Lisa; Inzlicht, Michael (2013). "Self-determination, self-regulation, and the brain: Autonomy improves performance by enhancing neuroaffective responsiveness to self-regulation failure". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 105 (1): 123–138. doi:10.1037/a0030426. PMID   23106250. S2CID   3899238.
  11. Inzlicht, Michael; Tullett, Alexa; Good, Marie (2011). "The need to believe: a neuroscience account of religion as a motivated process". Religion, Brain, & Behavior. 1 (3): 192–251. doi:10.1080/2153599X.2011.647849. S2CID   18064680.
  12. Inzlicht, Michael; Kang, Sonia (2010). "Stereotype threat spillover: How coping with threats to social identity affects aggression, eating, decision making, and attention". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 99 (3): 467–481. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.600.1063 . doi:10.1037/a0018951. PMID   20649368.
  13. Inzlicht, Michael; Shenhav, Amitai; Olivola, Christopher Y. (2018). "The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 22 (4): 337–349. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.007. PMC   6172040 . PMID   29477776.
  14. "Ghost Effects | By Patchen Barss | Winter 2018 | University of Toronto Magazine". magazine.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  15. Yong, Ed. "Psychology's Replication Crisis Can't Be Wished Away". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  16. "How much of the psychology literature is wrong?". apa.org. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  17. Engber, Daniel (2016-03-06). "Everything Is Crumbling". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  18. "Guest Post: Check Yourself before you Wreck Yourself". sometimes i'm wrong. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  19. "Psychology's Replication Crisis Is My Crisis". Undark. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  20. Michael Inzlicht (2025-01-29). "The Collapse of Ego Depletion". Substack.

Selected Awards & Honours

See also

Selected publications

References