Eric Mah Lifespan Cognition Lab Interview
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Lifespan Cognition Lab (Tier 2 Canada Research Chair Psychology Lab)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/08/03
Tell us about your brief background – education, family, and work.
My family is from Vancouver; I was born here but lived in the states for a good ~10 years before we moved back up to Canada. After that, the standard high school and first retail job before KPU. I have had the good fortune to have parents who have been willing to provide financial support for my education as well as professors who have given me opportunities to do field-relevant RA work throughout my undergraduate career. Through these professors I’ve been able to work on interesting projects, attend conferences, and draft and submit manuscripts.
Your main research interests are social and cognitive psychology. Why social and cognitive psychology?
I like the social and cognitive areas because they provide the frameworks to look at the beliefs and behaviours that dictate how people interact with each other in day-to-day life: attitudes and prejudices, influence and persuasion, fallacies, biases, and heuristics among others. I find fallacies (e.g., the gambler’s fallacy) and biases (e.g., attribution errors) particularly interesting because they offer some insight into why people make terrible decisions (and how we might prevent this). I also like these areas because they are broad enough that I have a lot of freedom to try out a variety of research questions.
Furthermore, you focus on topics of interest as these come into academic and intellectual purview. At the moment, this means the intersection between philosophy and psychology. Why the intersection between philosophy and psychology?
I have always liked philosophy; it asks the really big, fascinating questions and is conducive to really engaging debates and critical thinking. However, I have also wondered how relevant these philosophical questions are in everyday life. Along these lines, I did my honours thesis on how belief or disbelief in free will affects how people think about their life goals. For example, you might expect that reducing people’s beliefs in free will could cause them to view their goals as less under their control (spoilers: it didn’t). In future research, I’d like to look at how laypeople think about other philosophical questions—e.g., What is personal identity? What is the nature of reality? How much can we truly know?—and see how their answers influence everyday thinking and behaviour, if at all. Also, a lot of questions in philosophy are inherently untestable and probably unanswerable through philosophy alone so I’d like to explore them in a more scientific capacity.
You graduated from Kwantlen Polytechnic University with a Major in Psychology and a Minor in Philosophy. You are the lab manager for the Lifespan Cognition Lab of Dr. Daniel Bernstein. What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?
As the lab manager, I recruit and interview RA’s, buy materials for the lab, make sure lab research projects don’t conflict in terms of scheduling, coordinate lab meetings, handle website stuff and overall ensure things are running smoothly. Honestly, I don’t do a lot of managing; the Lifespan Cognition Lab is full of brilliant, hardworking, capable and independent RA’s who regularly design and direct full research projects under the supervision and guidance of Dr. Bernstein. It has been a great experience working with the team thus far.
You research risky decision-making from the same lab. What is the status of the research at this point in time?
I’m currently waiting on ethics approval for my first study on risky decision-making. I’ll be looking at how people make decisions on a gambling task when the stakes are fake money or smiley faces to see if different hypothetical stimuli affect risk-taking behaviour.
You research with Dr. Roger Tweed on positive psychology through the topic of faith in humanity. What defines “faith in humanity”? What is the research question? What is the status of this research?
One of the issues with faith in humanity is that it has been poorly defined (for the most part) in the literature. Dr. Tweed and I argue that faith in humanity is best defined as a focus on and tendency to see the good in people—their strengths and virtues. This definition is very similar to the central idea of positive psychology: a focus on promoting well-being rather than treating pathology, and we argue that faith in humanity should be a core focus of positive psychology. We’re currently working on writing this up as a review paper.
You research judgment/decision-making in gambling behaviour, too. What theme unites positive psychology with respect to faith in humanity, judgement/decision-making in gambling behaviour, and risky decision-making research within social and cognitive psychology?
I find them interesting! I can’t really think of any big theme that unites these areas other than the (very broad) fact that they deal with how peoples’ beliefs affect their behaviour.
What are the next steps for 2016 and in the years to come for you?
I’ll be going through the arduous process of grad school application this fall and will hopefully be starting on my Masters the year after that. Aside from that I plan to continue working with Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Tweed, and the rest of my KPU colleagues for as long as possible.
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