PhD
Instructor, Psychology
School of Social Sciences
Psychology
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
604.986.1911 ext. 3696
Fir Building, room FR445
jasonmartens@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, Social-Personality Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2014.
Bio
Jason Martens (PhD, University of British Columbia, 2014) is a social psychologist whose main research areas include emotion, meaning and culture.
After receiving degrees at the University of British Columbia, he took a lecturer position (equivalent to assistant professor) at Birmingham City University in Birmingham, England. He taught and conducted research there for several years before moving back to Canada in 2019.
Martens has published his work in respected international peer reviewed journals (e.g., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PLoS ONE, Cognition and Emotion, Self and Identity, Social Psychological and Personality Science), handbooks (e.g., Handbook of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Handbook of Positive Emotion), and presented his research at international conferences (e.g., Society for Personality and Social Psychology, European Association of Social Psychology).
Being a social psychologist, I enjoy teaching about how social factors influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. I'm particularly interested in teaching social and cultural psychology, but I also enjoy teaching introduction to psychology and other courses as well. I believe that teachers should create an engaging classroom climate, so I put in a lot of effort to make my courses interesting.
My research interests have included three areas:
- Emotion. I'm primarily interested in how emotions influence us, particularly pride. I've found that nonverbal pride communicates skill and knowledge, and that people preferentially copy and learn from these individuals.
- Meaning. I'm interested in how people make sense of the world and what happens when things don't make sense. My work has looked at how violations of our expectations influence how we perceive scientific theories and can affect working memory.
- Culture. I've been interested in how culture shapes people's psychology. I've looked at how farming practices can guide our cognitive styles and how culture can influence how we perceive emotions.