News & Jobs

News

Welcoming Our New Executive Committee Members-at-Large

We are thrilled to announce the addition of two distinguished scholars to our executive committee. Both Christopher and Jessica were elected as Members-at-large at the Annual Convention in San Francisco in May 2024.

Welcoming Dr. Christopher Mlynski Chris is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Vienna, working under the mentorship of Dr. Veronika Job. He completed his doctoral training under the guidance of Dr. Rex Wright, where he developed expertise in cardiovascular indicators of effortful engagement. Leveraging distinct changes in parasympathetic and sympathetic activity during task engagement, Chris' research aims to provide clarity to a diverse range of phenomena, fostering a nuanced understanding previously unattainable. Throughout his career, Dr. Mlynski has devoted himself to utilizing psychophysiological indicators of effortful engagement to illuminate various areas of study. His work spans the application of effort-related cardiovascular responses to phenomena such as self-control, self-regulation, Terror Management Theory, chronotype, fatigue, and effort aversion. In his most recent endeavors, he has broadened his research scope to encompass issues surrounding action crisis, Post-COVID syndrome, lay theories of willpower, aging, and pseudocontingency belief formation. With a steadfast commitment to advancing knowledge and understanding in his field, Chris' contributions pave the way for innovative approaches to better comprehend complex psychological phenomena through the utilization of cardiovascular physiology.

Welcoming Dr. Jessica Gamlin Jessica studies consumer behavior through the lens of the goals people adopt, how they stay motivated or whether they’ll self-sabotage during the pursuit, and the products and brands they deem instrumental along the way. Her research has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, and the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. Jessica is also interested in research topics exploring the interplay between a person’s identities and their goals. Jessica served on the program committee for the Society for the Science of Motivation Annual Meeting in 2022 and subsequently served as Co-Chair for the 2023 and 2024 conferences. She received her PhD in Marketing from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to our new members-at-large, Dr. Mlynski and Dr. Gamlin, as they embark on their journey with our executive committee.

Jobs

Two Assistant Professor Positions in Research and Teaching at University of Reading

We have two job positions here in Reading for lecturers (assistant professors in research and teaching) and we would be really delighted if we could get some motivation researchers to apply – please feel free forward to anyone who might be interested. I am very happy to answer any questions and to be contacted.

We have Netta Weinstein and me as motivation researchers here but also many people studying wider self-regulation processes such as emotion regulation (Carien Van Reekum), empathy (Bhisma Chakrabarti), motivation/ reward in depression (Ciara McCabe), or behaviour change, especially in the food domain. It's a nice, international department and Reading is very close to London (though much cheaper) – we're on the Tube map by now. 🙂

Here's the link (closing date is Sept. 16):
https://jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=13619

Many thanks in advance and kind regards, Julia
Julia Vogt, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Reading, School of Psychology and CLS
https://juliavogtpsychology.weebly.com/

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Building Our Community’s Professional Network

Are you looking to share an exciting job opportunity with our community? We invite you to submit your job listing to us. If you’ve encountered a job opportunity that you believe would resonate with our members, we also warmly encourage you to share it.

Submit Your Listing: Simply email your job details and/or job ad as PDF to Katharina Bernecker at k.bernecker@psychologie.uzh.ch, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Welcome to the SSM

The Society for the Science of Motivation is an international, interdisciplinary organization of researchers who study motivation. Its mission is to encourage inquiry into all aspects of motivation from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, and to facilitate the dissemination of findings to a broad scientific audience.

The SSM provides a forum for the exchange of scientific information, foster discussion of new ideas and findings on motivation among researchers, and encourages exchange and collaboration in research. It will do this through a list serve, online information exchange, annual conferences, and a journal dedicated exclusively to motivation research.