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MAGIC Lab
  • About
  • Research
    • Fundamental Motives
    • Morality
    • Politics
    • Rationalization
    • Religion
    • Self-regulation & Goal pursuit
    • Social class & Power
    • Social justice & Inequality
  • Publications
  • Lab Members
    • Lab Director
    • Lab Manager
    • Graduate Students
    • Research Assistants
    • Lab Alumni
  • Join the Lab!
    • Prospective Graduate Students
    • Prospective Research Assistants
  • News
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  • UBC Psychology
  • Congratulations to our recent PhD Graduate, Dr. Will Jettinghoff!

    After a successful trek through the PhD process, Will is joining our lab alumni! Check out the happy smiles on Dr. Laurin and Dr. Jettinghoff’s faces at the graduation this past May! Click the banner to learn more about our lab alumni.

  • Meet the Magic Lab Group!

    Curious about our research and joining the lab? Click the banner to learn more about joining the lab!

  • Social Justice & Inequality

    How do people handle their own advantage or disadvantage relative to others? How do people go about convincing themselves that justice exists? Click the banner to learn more about our research!

  • Social Class & Power

    Social class is notoriously hard to change, persisting over time within individuals, and even across generations within families. Why is it that the social standing you’re born with is most likely the social standing you’ll die with? Click on the banner to learn more about our research!

  • Rationalization

    We often lie to ourselves in small or big ways, and justify our actions. But what drives this and why do we do it? Click the banner to learn about our ongoing research!

  • Politics

    We live in an increasingly polarized world that can be difficult to navigate. What leads some people to listen and seek new opinions, and others to shut the opposition out? Click the banner to read about our ongoing research!

  • Morality

    How do we decide who is good and who is bad? How do we decide whether and how much to punish someone for doing something we’ve decided is wrong? Click the banner to learn about our ongoing research!

Welcome to the MAGIC lab, directed by Dr. Kristin Laurin We study Motivation And Goals In Contexts.

Fancy acronyms aside, this means we study how motivations–from fundamental human motives like the need for control and autonomy, to your idiosyncratic personal goals like becoming a firefighter or running a sub-2-hour half marathon–relate to things like political ideologies, religious beliefs, moral codes, interpersonal relationships, norms, and much more.

Check out the research tab for examples of current projects!

And check here for our lab’s compilation of resources for the grad school application process. Anyone can comment, so let us know that way if you want to suggest a resource for us to add, or if one is outdated and we should remove it!

The lab is currently admitting new graduate students for the 2025/2026 academic year! Read more here!

  • News
Paper alert: Childhood and Current Social Class Context Influence Trust Behavior and Expectations! Across five pre-registered studies, we looked at how socio-economic status affects who we trust. We found that people tend to trust individuals with lower childhood SES because they are seen as moral. Read the paper for more results! https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001735
MORE NEWS
MAGIC Lab
Vancouver Campus
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4
Email klaurin@psych.ubc.ca
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