Matthew Billet
Research Area
Education
M.A., University of British Columbia, 2021
B.Sc., Queen's University, 2019
About
Matthew Billet (he/him) is a graduate student in Social/Personality Psychology, co-supervised by Ara Norenzayan and Mark Schaller. His research focuses on how moral and religious cognition influence decision-making, particularly in the domain of environmental protection. He also studies the evolutionary basis of social cognition and its implications for how we form judgments about others. He employs multiple methodologies in his work (experimentation, cross-cultural methods, behavioural economics, and text analysis) and is a proponent of open science.
Research
Bridging the political divide on environmental issues; cultural evolution of moral and religious cognition; evolutionary basis of social cognition.
Publications
Selected Publications:
Billet, M. I., Baimel, A., Sahakari, S. S., Schaller, M., & Norenzayan, A. (2023). Ecospirituality: The psychology of moral concern for nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 87, 102001. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102001
Billet, M. I., McCall, H. C., & Schaller, M. (2022). What motives do people most want to know about when meeting another person? An investigation into prioritization of information about seven fundamental motives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(4), 495–509. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211069468
Billet, M. I., & Fekken, G. C. (2020). The influence of instrumentality in trusting Dark Triad members. Personality and Individual Differences, 154, 109690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109690
Awards
Joseph-Armand Bombardier Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC – CGS D & CGS M)
Michael J. Quinn Graduate Exchange Fellowship
Toloka Student Grant for Cross-Cultural Research
Business for Social Good Grant, The Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at UBC Sauder