In a typical year, there are more than a dozen graduate and undergraduate students involved in the Fab Lab. Most of the graduate students are MSc or PhD students who are completing theses under the supervision of Dr. Fabrigar. Other graduate students involved in the lab are supervised by other faculty at Queen’s University, but may be involved in the lab because they are conducting non-thesis related research in collaboration with Dr. Fabrigar.
Undergraduate students have always played a very important role in our lab. Some undergraduate students in the lab are honours thesis students completing theses under the supervision of Dr. Fabrigar. Other undergraduate students involved in lab activities are students completing directed lab courses (PSYC 570/575), students working as paid research assistants, or students working as volunteer research assistants.
graduate students are involved in all phases of the research process for their projects and appear as first author or co-author on articles, book chapters, and presentations that report research originating from their projects. Undergraduate students typically assist in the collection, processing, and analysis of data for projects being conducted in the lab. In some cases, undergraduate students become sufficiently involved in a project that they may be included as co-authors on articles or conference presentations. Many articles and conference presentations originating from our lab have included undergraduate student co-authors.
In a typical year, Fab Lab graduate students and some undergraduate students attend at least one major academic conference where they present their research. The most common conference for us to attend is the annual conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). Other conferences that students have sometimes attended include the annual conferences of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), and the Midwestern Psychological Association (MPA).
Approximately every two weeks, members of the Fab Lab and members of the Mac Lab (the lab of Dr. Tara MacDonald) meet as a group. In these MacFab Lab meetings, we have student presentations of research, discuss research being conducted in other labs, or discuss academic and professional issues.
Leandre R. Fabrigar
Professor, Lab Director
A.A., University of Maryland, Munich Branch Campus, Munich, Federal Republic of Germany, 1986.
B.A., Psychology. Miami University, Oxford OH, 1988.
M.A., Psychology. The Ohio State University, Columbus OH, 1991.
Ph.D., Psychology. The Ohio State University, Columbus OH, 1995.
Research Interests
Dr. Fabrigar’s primary research interests fall within the domain of attitude and persuasion research. Within this domain, his research has investigated the effects of attitude structure and social context in regulating the susceptibility of attitudes to persuasion and the impact of attitudes on behavior, judgment, and information processing. His research has also explored methods of measuring attitudes and their underlying structural properties. Other research interests include the psychological mechanisms underlying social influence tactics, the relationship between personality traits and the self, the role of attachment style in relationship processes, and methodological issues in the application of statistical methods (e.g., factor analysis and structural equation modeling) to psychological research.
Awards and Distinctions
- Elected to the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology, 2002.
- Elected to the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, 2003.
- Fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, 2009.
- Fellow of the Midwestern Psychological Association, 2013.
- Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 2015.
- Fellow for the Association for Psychological Science, 2015.
- Winner of the Frank Knox Award for Teaching Excellence, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 1999.
- Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 2005.
- Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 2007, 2012, 2015.
Professional Service
- Consulting Editor, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1998, 2000-2004
- Consulting Editor, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2006-2015
- Consulting Editor, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2006-2016
- Associate Editor, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2003-2005
- Co-Editor, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2013-2016
- Panel Member, Psychosocial Sociocultural, and Behavioural Determinants of Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2004-2006
- Panel Member, Insight Development Grant Committee, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2014
Current PhD Students
Devin Fowlie
Devin obtained a Bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he completed an honours degree in psychology and a major in religious studies. As a Master’s student in Dr. Fabrigar’s lab he is, perhaps unsurprisingly, interested in attitudes and persuasion. Devin’s research focuses on the effects of attitude strength, accessibility, and extremity on information processing. Devin looks forward to growing his research interests alongside the other members of the Fab lab team.
Ava Camposarcone
Ava Camposarcone obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University where she completed an honours degree in psychology. She completed her Master’s degree in Dr. Fabrigar’s lab, where she studied individual differences in the effectiveness of self-esteem maintenance strategies. As a PhD student, she continues to investigate the efficacy of different self-esteem maintenance strategies for extroverts versus introverts. Additionally, Ava is interested in belief formation at the group-level as well as developing implicit measures of attitude strength properties.