Rumi Naito and Yu Luo have successfully defended their PhDs! (Sept. 2022)

Check out my new TED talk on how to take action on climate change and get happier! (Apr 2023)

Congratulations to Annie Lalande for getting the competitive CIHR Doctoral Scholarship AND congratulations to Annie for receiving the UBC Sustainability Leadership Award!! (Apr 2023)

Congratulations to Jaden Phillips for becoming the Youth Engagement Coordinator at Climate Reality Canada! (Apr 2023)

Welcome Jade Radke to our lab! Jade is a new Master's student in IRES. (Sep 2022)

Congratulations to Annie Lalande for getting funding from the UBC Public Scholars Initiative! (Aug 2022)

Congratulations to Ryan Dwyer for succcessfully passing his PhD defense! (Aug 2022)

Double congratulations to Jade Radke, a new incoming Master's student, for winning the Aboriginal Graduate Fellowship and the SSHRC CGSM scholarship! (Apr 2022)

Congratulations to Annie Lalande for getting the Killam Doctoral Scholarship! (Mar 2022)

Brynley Hanson-Wright has successfully defended her MSc thesis! This is also our first in-person thesis defense since 2020. (Mar 2022)

Liz Dunn and I co-created the Happy Climate Workshop that uses the science of sweet spot approach to increase happiness while reducing carbon emissions. This workshop can be run in any group anywhere with anyone. (Dec 2021)

Welcome Jaden Phillips, Lyra Shi, and Andrew Li to our lab! Jaden is an incoming Master's student in IRES and Lyra and Andrew are incoming Master's students in Psychology. (Sep 2021)

Huge congratulations to Ru Qi Yu for getting a junior faculty position at the East China Normal University in Shanghai! (Apr 2021)

Huge congratulations to Annie Lalande for being accepted into the Clinician-Investigator Program! (Mar 2021)

Congratulations to Nigel Deans for winning the SSHRC graduate fellowship! (Mar 2021)

Check out our video on happy sustainability! Thank you to Magic Bullet Media and the House of Beautiful Business for producing the video! (Nov 2020)

Andrea Byfuglien successfully defended her MSc thesis online! (Apr 2020)

Our article in Boston Globe with Liz Dunn on actions to take to reduce carbon footprint while increasing happiness! (Dec 2019)

It's official! (Dec 2019)

Our op-eds on motivated attention in climate change perception and action in Medium and The Conversation. (Sept 2019)

Ale has successfully defended her PhD dissertation! (Aug 2019)

Andrea attends the United Nations High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development as a Canada Youth Delegate working on Sustainable Development Goals! (July 2019)

Congratulations to Yu Luo for winning the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship! (July 2019)

Welcome Gage Peterson and James Wu to our lab! Gage is an incoming MA student in Psychology and James is an incoming PhD student in IRES. (July 2019)

Huge congratulations to Ryan Dwyer for winning the Vanier Scholarship! (June 2019)

After five years of hard work! (Dec 2018)

Congratulations to Ivana Zelenika for passing her PhD defense! (August 2018)

Welcome Andrea Byfuglien to our lab! Andrea is a new Master's student in IRES after her double bachelor's degrees in psychology and geography from University of Melbourne. (July 2018)

Congratulations to Yu Luo for winning the Cordula and Gunter Paetzold Fellowship! (June 2018)

Our op-ed on water conservation nudges in Cape Town, South Africa in The Conversation. (March 2018)

Our op-ed on visual attention and climate change in The Conversation. (March 2018)

Our new study with Anuj Shah, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir on money in the mental lives of the poor. (Feb 2018)

Our recent studies on scarcity are featured in VICE Magazine and Mic. (Oct 2017)

Congratulations to Ru Qi Yu for winning the NSERC CGSD Doctoral fellowship and Ale for winning the Killam Doctoral Scholarship! (July 2017)

Rumi Naito is joining the lab as a new PhD student starting September 2017! (May 2017)

Media reports on Alex's new paper demonstrating how convenience improves recycling and composting behavior in high-rise multi-family buildings. (Apr 2017)

Brandon Tomm, Ru Qi Yu, and Yu Luo presented their work at the 2016 Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting. (May 2016)

Katherine (Rae) Cramer and Yu Luo are joining the lab as new graduate students! (Apr 2016)

Media reports about our work on recycling and water conservation from UBC, CBC, CBC Radio, Radio Canada International, and Roundhouse Radio. (Apr 2016)

We are launching a real-time energy display project in 15 academic and residential buildings on UBC campus. You can select any building on the first page and see what the display looks like: www.ubc-realtime-energy.com. The goal of this project is to see how real-time energy consumption information influences actual energy consumption behaviors of the inhabitants in the building. For more information about the display, please click here. (Mar. 2016)

Based on our research, Nascent Objects have developed a modular device called Droppler that listens to water sounds in the environment and offers visual feedback of water use in real time, in order to reduce water consumption. Here is more information about the device: UBC Psychology, Crowdfund Insider, Live Science, and Co.Exist. (Jan. 2016)

We have launched an online sorting game to train people on how to sort their waste correctly based on UBC sorting policies. The goal of this project is to see whether this game improves actual recycling and composting rates on campus. Click here to play the game. (Jan 2016)

Our new Behavioral Sustainability Lab has finally finished its renovation and can proudly serve students from Psychology Department and IRES, featured as the lab of the month. (Dec. 2015)

Congrats to Ru for winning the NSERC graduate fellowship! (Dec 2015)

Hopping through trees with the lab in the UBC Botanic Garden. (July 2015)

Congrats to Ale for winning the Graduate Global Leadership Fellowship! She was ranked the first out of the only two fellowships awarded. (July 2015)

Congrats to Ru for winning the Elizabeth Young Lacey Scholarship in Psychology! (July 2015)

Alejandra Echeverri presented her talk on how messaging shapes attitudes towards sea otters as a species at risk at the Annual Meeting of Canadian Association of Geographers. (June 2015)

Ru Qi Yu and Yu Luo presented their posters at the 2015 Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting. Click on the images below for reprints of their posters. (May 2015)

At the 17th Annual Psychology Undergrad Research Conference at UBC, Ruzzelle Gasmen presented her talk on how environmental perceptions shape subjective well-being, Yu Wang presented her poster on the cognitive biases in the perception of climate change, and Desmond Fung presented his poster on how scarcity tunes attention. (March 2015)

Brandon Tomm and Ru Qi Yu are joining the lab as new graduate students in the Department of Psychology! (Feb 2015)

We are launching the Happiness Project at UBC! This project investigates how the immediate physical environment shpaes subjective well-being. Please visit our study website for more info. (Sep 2014)

Congrats to Sumeyye for winning the Robert Sommer Award for best student paper awarded by the Canadian Psychological Association! Check out her poster here. (June 2014)

Sumeyye Cakal presented her talk on how statistical regularities shape object perception, Yu Luo presented his talk on how regularities alter the spatial scale of attention, and Ru Qi Yu presented his poster on the persistent attentional bias to regularities, at the 14th Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, in St. Pete Beach, Florida. (May 2014)

My awesome lab in the Rose Garden at UBC (Apr 2014)

Congrats to Sumeyye for winning the Student Engagement Award from the PSA! (Apr 2014)

Congrats to Liz for winning the Master's Student Fellowship awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council! (Mar 2014)

Sumeyye Cakal and Yu Luo presented their posters at the 16th Annual Psychology Undergrad Research Conference at UBC. (Mar 2014)

Congrats to Ru for winning the Psychology Summer Research Assistanship in 2014! (Feb 2014)

Congrats to Sumeyye for winning the Quinn Travel Award in 2014! (Feb 2014)

My wonderful students and RAs, many more not included in the photo. (Feb 2014)

My lab is now recruiting postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research assistants. Please contact me if interested (jiayingz@psych.ubc.ca).