Michael Inzlicht

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.

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. However, in later years he suggested that work on stereotype threat might not be replicable.

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. He also explores how self-control can be influenced by various cultural and situational factors, including mindfulness meditation, quality of motivation, religious belief, and stigmatization. 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.

Inzlicht is a vocal advocate for open science reform. In addition to criticizing the status quo and the replication crisis in psychology, he has expressed doubts about the replicability of his own past scientific work, such as his research on ego depletion. Provided by Wikipedia