Stephen Want
Associate Professor
Psychology
Ryerson University
Canada
Biography
Dr. Want is Director of the Media and Social Development Lab at Ryerson and currently serves as the Teaching Chair for the Faculty of Arts. Before joining Ryerson in 2005 he worked at The University of British Columbia and The University of Sheffield and completed his training at The University of Birmingham (undergraduate) and The University of Oxford (graduate). At Ryerson, Dr. Want has taught Introductory Psychology (Psy102/202) as well as upper-level courses in both Developmental (Psy302, Psy908, Ps8502) and Social Psychology (Psy918, Ps8504). In 2013 he was awarded the Excellence in Teaching First-Year Classes Award from the Faculty of Arts. Dr. Want’s research interests concern questions about the use and effects of various forms of mass media (e.g. magazines, television, the internet). He is also interested in the psychology of teaching and learning, and the psychology of psychological experiments (e.g. demand characteristics, replication, p-hacking).
Research Interest
social cognition; social comparison; media effects; demand characteristics and experimenter effects
Publications
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Quigg, S.L. & Want, S.C. (2011). Highlighting media modifications: Can a television commercial mitigate the effects of music videos on female appearance satisfaction? Body Image, 8, 135-142.
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Want, S.C. (2014). Three questions regarding the ecological validity of experimental research on the impact of viewing thin-ideal media images. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 36, 24-37.
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McLean, C., Want, S.C. & Dyson, B.J. (2015). The role of similarity, sound, and awareness in the appreciation of visual artwork via motor simulation. Cognition, 137, 174-181.
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Want, S.C., Botres, A., Vahedi, Z. & Middleton, J.A. (2015). On the cognitive (in)efficiency of social comparisons with media images. Sex Roles, 73, 519-532.
