Travis Lim

Faculty Lecturer - Department of Psychology Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ...

McGill is hiring a faculty lecturer in social psychology, in a (non-adjunct) permanent teaching position.

Please consider being my colleague, Montreal is really great: mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/McGill...

approach used to estimate needs from Discord posts

New paper out led by my student Jeremy Rappel using a natural language processing approach to examine behavior in leaked far right Discord chatrooms.

We find that *estimated* basic psychological needs are related to posting behavior and use of hate speech.
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journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Knowing What You Want: The Role of Relationship Clarity in Single Young Adults' Loneliness and Well‐Being The goal of the current study was to explore the role of relationship clarity—the extent to which someone understands what they want in a relationship—in single young adults' dating experiences. We h....

📄 New paper about single people's dating experiences is out!

We found that relationship clarity - the extent to which someone know what they want in a relationship - predicts single young adults' loneliness and well-being as they navigate the dating world.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Perceptions of Safety and Threat in the Environment: The STEP Scale - Lora E. Park, Deborah E. Ward, Kristin Naragon-Gainey, Elizabeth A. Canning, Nicole Koefler, Zaviera A. Panlilio, Valerie Vessels,... The Safety and Threat in Environment Perceptions (STEP) scale assesses perceptions of environments as safe (welcoming, inclusive) or threatening (critical, inti...

New paper out from the Self & Motivation Lab on Safety and Threat in the Environment Perceptions (STEP). The STEP scale assesses people's overall, gut-level impressions of any given space and uniquely predicts engagement, interest, & desire to recruit others
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New lab paper in JESP! What is the association between gender and food portion sizes? And how might such associations impact actual real-world treatment? We used lab and field studies to explore this question 🍽️

A big thank you to everyone who turned up for my talk at #SPSP2025! I had fun discussing research with so many brilliant minds and it’s time to channel that energy into finishing up this manuscript.

(Look at my advisor @erichehman.bsky.social capturing the start of my first ever conference talk)

Unfortunately we didn't test this longitudinally, so can't answer. But I'd speculate that there would be critical periods!

Key takeaway: We find broad support for intergroup contact theory—contact is negatively associated with prejudice across groups with a wide array of distinct group properties.

Across 80 groups, we find that intergroup contact was consistently associated with lower prejudice.

Does a group’s properties (e.g., size, permeability, warmth) matter? No. (But we thought they would!)

Does the type of intergroup contact matter? No.

It is well-known that intergroup contact reduces prejudice.

However, existing research has largely tested the same type of groups but numerous other types of groups exist and they are not all the same (think: Asian people vs introverts vs people who live in the same neighbourhood).

My first paper with @erichehman.bsky.social and @acceb.bsky.social is out! We tested intergroup contact across many different types of groups:

doi.org/10.1525/coll...

New JPSP article is out, with @jordanaxt.bsky.social, @calvinklai.bsky.social, and many collaborators! We organised a contest study with an open call for interested researchers to submit their discrimination-reduction intervention ideas. doi.org/10.1037/pspa...

ISCON is excited to announce that the 2023 Best Social Cognition Paper Award goes to Hester, N., & Hehman, E. (2023). Dress is a fundamental component of person perception. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 27(4), 414-433! Congrats @neilrhester.bsky.social and @erichehman.bsky.social!

New paper in JPSP with @elianeroy.bsky.social ! Here, we ask: Is measuring attitudes more like playing darts or more like searching for a prize in a ”claw” machine? More details in the thread below....

And you can't use the cheap paint I think! When I was teaching in junior college years ago they used the cheap paint and the markers would stain the wall purple urgh

We have launched the competition. Can still join if interested in participating, but we won't be checking registration page anymore. Instead, can reach out to the lead author @travislim.bsky.social or [email] travis.j.lim@mail.mcgill.ca and we'll get you set up (models due June 13)

New paper out in Social and Personality Psychology Compass starting and sustaining fruitful collaborations in psych.

Thanks to Lara Aknin, Sarah Gaither, Emily Impett & Ashley Whillans for their valuable contributions.

Feel free to share with students, mentees, faculty:
dx.doi.org/10.1111/spc3...

Official launch of our prejudice modeling competition.
-We give you some data, you build a model, and we test it on new data
-$2k for winning teams, and authorship for all
Sign up and more info here: hehmanlab.org/competition
Would appreciate sharing widely!
#SocialPsyc #PrejudiceResearch

Relatedly, going to be launching a modeling competition of prej in the next 6 mos.
-We give you some data, you build a model, and we test it on hold out. Cash for winner and authorship for all teams.
-Just a soft launch announcement for now, but email eric.hehman@mcgill.ca to be included

New paper in Psych Review, w Becca Neel @acceb.bsky.social
We create two formal(ish?) models of prejudice

preprint: osf.io/v4q7p

Quick description:

I made it to the land of the blue sky!