News

June 05, 2024

On June 5-6, 2024, David Sherman visited University of Amsterdam, where he gave a colloquium to the social psychology area and visited with the lab of Cameron Brick (UCSB Ph.D. 2015). 

The talk was on "Culture, Identity, and Support for Environmental Action.” 

Pictured below are Cameron and David at the University of Amsterdam. For more information on Cameron’s research and lab, check out:

https://www.cameronbrick.com/

He is scheduled to visit UCSB on August 5, 2024 to give a colloquium (time and location TBA).

May 31, 2024

Congratulations to Suyi Leong, winner of the 2024 McClintock Award, which recognizes annually the social psychology graduate student who exemplifies the qualities cherished in Chuck McClintock, who was the first social psychologist on the UCSB faculty. Those qualities are:
   (1) scholarship -- excellent scholarship and a solid research record
   (2) education -- a commitment to education and contributing to the educational function of the program
   (3) service -- a genuine concern for others and generous contribution to the functioning of the social psychology program (including being there to help someone on the fringe or who needed a little extra help/attention)

Pictured below is Suyi, along with Professor Nancy Collins, who presented the award at the 2024 Mini-Con.

Congratulations Suyi!

May 14, 2024

Congratulations to Class of 2024 student Tricia Pang, who presented her honors thesis poster on Culture and Social Support-Seeking Behaviors at the URCA Colloquium at Corwin Pavilion. Tricia was mentored by PhD student Suyi Leong and Professor David Sherman and the research was sponsored by an URCA grant from UCSB.

April 16, 2024

David Sherman delivered a Keynote Address on "Self-Affirmation and Educational Interventions: Theory, Outcomes, Process, and Questions” on 18 April 2024 at Humboldt University in Berlin. The talk was part of the two-day workshop, sponsored by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) and the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research. The conference was organized by Dr. Müller, and titled "Promoting positive social outcomes in diverse contexts: The potential of social psychological approaches and interventions.” Below is David pictured outside Humboldt University and giving his talk, along with the rest of the conference participants.

David Sherman presented a talk, “The Fierce Urgency of Now”: Intergroup Conflict and the Social Psychology  of Climate Change Policy” at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. David presented to an audience of students and professors at the Institute for Sustainability Psychology on 16 April 2024. The talk occurred in a remarkable lecture hall, The Central Building.

March 29, 2024

Welcome Jungbin Lim & Devlin O’Keefe, new lab members beginning in Fall 2024, pictured with Suyi Leong! Both Jungbin and Devlin were named 2035 Fellows as part of the 2035 Initiative at UCSB.

October 05, 2023

David Sherman and Connor Gibbs organize Veteran Transitions Research Lab Summit.

July 12, 2023

The Duke University Veteran Transitions Research Initiative (VTRI), which David Sherman co-directs with Aaron Kay, has expanded and will now be the Veteran Transitions Research Lab (VTRL).

More information bout the lab cand be found at DukeVTRL.com.

July 03, 2023

PhD candidate Connor Gibbs presented his research on military veterans' transition to civilian employment at the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) general meeting in Krakow, Poland.

Peyton Carroll & Nishay Chitale
June 16, 2023

RAs Peyton Carroll & Nishay Chitale Receive Exceptional Academic Performance Award.

February 01, 2023

Connor Gibbs publishes his first first author journal article in Social and Personality Psychology Compass titled "Who needs control? A cultural perspective on the process of compensatory control".   

https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12722

January 26, 2023

2018 PBS PhD Kimin Eom, Assistant Professor at Singapore Management University, was named Rising Star of the Association for Psychological Science (2023).

November 03, 2022

Suyi Leong published her first first author journal article in PLOS One title "Individual costs and community benefits: Collectivism and individuals’ compliance with public health interventions". 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275388

June 10, 2022

Congratulations to Priscilla Diaz-Gonzalez & Jorryn Tovera, undergraduates in the Sherman Lab for their senior awards! Jorryn received the Nasser Award, and Priscilla received the Distinguished Graduating Senior Award at the 2022 UCSB Psychological & Brain Sciences Awards Ceremony. Jorryn worked with Connor Gibbs, along with Prof. Sherman and Priscilla worked with Suyi Leong along with Prof. Sherman. 

 

Best wishes to Priscilla and Jorryn in their future endeavors!

May 10, 2022

Congratulations to Priscilla Diaz-Gonzalez who has accepted a job offer as a research coordinator at Dr. Stephanie Fryberg’s lab, the Culture Collaboratory, at the University of Michigan! She will be graduating in Spring 2022 and starting her position in Summer. She has been working in the lab with PhD student Suyi Leong. Congratulations, Priscilla, we are so proud of you, and we look forward to the great things you will do in the future!

May 03, 2022

Jorryn Tovera presents his Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities (URCA) project at the annual poster colloquium.

Congratulations to Jorryn Tovera, graduating senior, for completing his URCA Project titled Mixed Messages: How Media Content Affects Partisan Views of Political Out-Group, and for being admitted to several law schools. Jorryn will begin studying law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in Fall 2022.

April 27, 2022

David Sherman and Connor Gibbs attend inaugural meeting of Veteran Transitions Research Initiative (VTRI) at Duke University.

VTRI Website: https://sites.fuqua.duke.edu/vtri/

March 01, 2022

Suyi Leong, 3rd year PhD student, is going to be a User Experience Research Intern in Meta, Inc. in Summer 2022! She is excited to learn the process of conducting research in industry, and is looking forward to apply the knowledge she has gained in graduate school to the context of human-technology interaction and social media.

February 13, 2022

Dr. David Sherman, Lauren's advisor, notes the following about her time here at UCSB:

 

Congratulations to Lauren Ortosky who successfully defended her dissertation, “The Psychological Impact of Normalizing Nationalism in a Transnational World.” Lauren’s dissertation tackled the question of how people’s evaluations of transnational problems such as climate change are impacted by both their own levels of nationalism as well as the situation where they see that nationalism is becoming more normalized. Her findings that higher levels of nationalism are associated with increased derogation of issues that require international cooperation raise important questions for science and society. Throughout her time at UCSB, where she was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Lauren has been committed to understanding and aiding people in important life  transitions. In her research, she examined this with military veterans and their transition to the workforce and STEM PhD students and their transition from graduate school to industry and the professorate. This commitment also emerges in her extensive mentoring work, for which Lauren received the Fiona & Michael Goodchild Graduate Mentoring Award in 2020. Not only a dedicated mentor to the undergraduate research assistants she supervises, Lauren fostered mentoring opportunities for others by co-creating the program, Access Grads. This program, which was the recipient of a major CARES Act Grant in 2021 connects psychology undergraduates interested in graduate school with graduate student mentors, and aims to increase access to research careers for students from diverse backgrounds. I have no doubt that the passion and energy that Lauren brought to social issues and mentoring throughout her time at UCSB will carry forth in her professional endeavors. With a sincere “Woo-hoo,” and warmest wishes for fulfillment and joy in all the trails that she will traverse, I congratulate Dr. Lauren Ortosky on earning her doctoral degree.

 

Congratulations, Dr. Ortosky!

January 25, 2022

New paper in PNAS on politics of COVID-19 featured in The Current.

UCSB's The Current Article: https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2022/020525/politics-covid

Empirical Paper: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/119/3/e2117543119.full.pdf

December 07, 2021

Congratulations to Michelle Handy on completing the PhD program.

Dr. David Sherman, Michelle's advisor, notes the following about her time here at UCSB:
 

October 09, 2021

Conference on Climate Change Solutions to be organized by David Sherman, Leaf Van Boven and Sarah Anderson.

September 28, 2021

Connor Gibbs wins a Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Graduate Travel Award.

September 01, 2021

A forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Social Issues has been published online: Self-affirmation Theory in Educational Contexts: Exploring whether, when, why and how self-affirmation interventions are effective at reducing educational inequalities. The special issue was co-edited by Prof. Peter Harris (Sussex), Prof Matthew Easterbrook, and Professor David Sherman. The special issue was created after a meeting sponsored by the European Association of Social Psychology and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. The meeting, held at University of Sussex, UK in June 2019 entitled, “Self-affirmation in Education: Why, when, and how are self-affirmation interventions effective at reducing educational inequalities?” formed the basis for this special issue. The introductory article can be read here:

Easterbrook, M. J., Harris, P. R., & Sherman, D. K. (2021). Self-affirmation theory in educational contexts. Journal of Social Issues. doi.org/10.1111/josi.12459

May 24, 2021

Huge congratulations to Luiza Rosa, a 2021 graduate of UCSB, for winning the prestigious Morgan Award for Academic Excellence in Psychological & Brain Sciences for outstanding scholarship. Luiza’s honors thesis is on “Depression and the Divine: Religious Fate Ascriptions and Depression Risk” (with honors advisor Dr. Fridlund) and she has been working in the Sherman Lab with PhD Student Suyi Leong on examining the role of family sacrifice across different social class contexts.

March 23, 2021

Congratulations to social psychology graduate student Connor Gibbs, who is the recipient of a National Science Foundation's (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. Connor is one of 2,074 award winners in 2021, who received a three-year fellowship to pursue his research. Connor, who earned his B.A. with Honors in Psychology at Westmont College, is a second year PhD student in the social psychology area, working with advisor David Sherman. He describes his research interests: “My research broadly addresses how we respond to various forms of threat and interventions to mitigate the negative effects of those threats. The program of research I will be developing as part of my NSF work includes investigating methods to improve military veterans' transitions to civilian life and employment.”

January 27, 2021

Jim Logan from UCSB's The Current reports on David Sherman's recent Perspectives on Psychological Science publication, "The Challenges of Military Veterans in Their Transition to the Workplace: A Call for Integrating Basic and Applied Science."

August 20, 2020

PhD Student Suyi Leong, along with Dr. Mary Hegarty, Dr. Holly Carpenter, and PhD Candidate Camille Endacott, joined CSUCI Presents in a discussion about UCSB Multidisciplinary Research on COVID-19 & Its Impacts (MRCI) Grant. In this episode, they discussed what MRCI is, how it came about, and the graduate students’ respective projects.

 

Click here to listen to the episode.

July 13, 2020

We are thrilled to congratulate our lab member Lauren Ortosky on the Fiona and Michael Goodchild Graduate Mentoring Award, ​honoring graduate students who have distinguished themselves in the area of undergraduate research supervision. 

Suyi Leong
June 25, 2020


Congratulations to PhD student Suyi Leong, currently a first-year graduate student, on receiving the Multidisciplinary Research on COVID-19 and Its Impacts (MRCI) Summer Minigrant. Her project focuses on examining cultural ideologies that affect support for pragmatic policies such as digital contact tracing and mask wearing in the current pandemic. She will receive a $2,000 stipend for this project, and an additional $500 for research funds.

April 20, 2020

Professor David Sherman launches interview series about Health Psychology and COVID-19.

 

March 23, 2020

In this interview with "The Current", Dr. David Sherman and Dr. Heejung Kim discuss their research on xenophobic reactions to disease outbreaks and consider society’s response to COVID-19.

December 01, 2019

Psychological Science’s Contribution to a Sustainable Future: 

Eom, Papadakis, Sherman, & Kim (2019) paper featured in Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science

July 18, 2019

Huge congratulations to Alicia Hernandez, a 2019 graduate of UCSB, for winning the prestigious Morgan Award for Research Promise in Psychological and Brain Sciences for her Honors Thesis titled, “Confirmation bias and political polarization: The effects of attitude-consistency and reliability on trust and memory for apolitical news stories.”

May 21, 2019

Congratulations to Emily La, a junior Psychological & Brain Sciences and Environmental Studies double major, who was chosen as the second-place winner of the Library Award for Undergraduate Research in the Social Sciences category. She will receive a $500 award for her paper: "Understanding Psychological Buffers to Health Adversities Within Sustainable Communities.” Emily is a research assistant in the Sherman Lab working with Professor David Sherman and PhD student Michelle Shteyn on sustainability.

January 09, 2019

Actually, Republicans Do Believe in Climate Change

By Leaf Van Boven and David Sherman

January 09, 2019

Does Awareness Of Environmental Problems Guarantee Environmental Actions? Maybe More For Those Privileged

Montecito Asked to Participate in Disaster Survey
October 08, 2018

The next disaster is on many minds as winter approaches, bringing with it the promise, or threat, of more rain. To both better prepare and also understand the Montecito debris flow preparations, everyone living in the 93108 is being asked to fill out a survey designed by UCSB scientists to understand public reaction to emergencies. Physical scientists are teaming up with social scientists at the school — or the Montecito debris flow research team — to mail postcards that ask recipients to go online to fill out the survey. Survey responses will help add clarity to the information scientist already have on this disaster and will aid in preparations for future emergencies.

July 18, 2018

Lauren Ortosky was accepted to a competitive program based at the IDC Herzliya outside of Tel Aviv, Israel for an intensive two-week study of negotiation and conflict resolution. The institute is led every year by Columbia Business School Professor Adam Galinsky and NYU Social Psychology Professor Yaacov Trope. While in Israel, Lauren held multiple in depth meetings on potential research collaborations with Professor Eran Halperin of IDC. After giving her final presentation at the institute, she spent about 10 days traveling solo through small towns in the Galilee, Jerusalem, and hiking the deserts in the south of the country. It was a tremendously enriching experience academically, culturally, politically, and socially!

 Kimin Eom and Phillip Ehret Awarded McClintock Award
June 07, 2018

Social Psychology doctoral students Kimin Eom and Phillip Ehret were both awarded the 2018 Charles McClintock Award. The McClintock Award is given to a senior graduate student for excellence in scholarship, education, and service.

April 09, 2018

 

Phil Ehret, 6th year PhD student in social psychology, has won APA Division 34's (Population and conservation psychology) Graduate Student Award for the best graduate student led paper.

April 04, 2018

Congratulations to social psychology graduate student Lauren Ortosky, who is the recipient of a National Science Foundation's (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. Lauren is one of 2000 award winners in 2018, who received a three-year fellowship to pursue her research.

August 23, 2017

"Beyond the Bystander Effect" by Cameron Brick, featured in Psychology Today

Sherman lab alumn Cameron Brick discusses Brick, Sherman, & Kim, 2017 paper on identity and pro-environmental behavior. 

Photo of Phil Ehret
July 13, 2017

For his excellence in and contributions to undergraduate research supervision and for encouraging others to become involved in these research efforts. 

Photo of Michelle Shteyn
June 15, 2017

We are thrilled to welcome Michelle to the lab as a new PhD student beginning Summer 2017.

June 11, 2017

Provides funding for continued graduate research at UCSB. 

Recycling stock photo
April 10, 2017

"The Psychology of Environmentalism (How culture motivates eco-friendly behaviors)" by Jim Logan 

See the link below for a full-text of our paper and a feature of our lab's work in the campus newsletter

 

Photo of Lauren Ortosky and David Sherman
January 22, 2017

The Graduate Student Poster Awards recognize graduate poster presentations characterized by excellence in research, clarity in presentation, and personal knowledge in a discussion with the judges at the annual convention.

Virus Stock Photo
May 20, 2016

"Viral Fear" by Jim Logan

See the link below for a full-text of our paper and a feature of our lab's work in the campus newsletter