Oliver Jacobs

Oliver is a cognitive PhD student in the Brain, Attention, and Reality lab working under the supervision of Dr. Alan Kingstone. His research interests mainly revolve around emerging technologies, mind perception, and cognition more broadly in the real world. He is also a passionate advocate for virtual reality as a methodology tool for human research and its greater ability to improve people’s lives. Oliver is also a contributing editor to Psychology Today and has worked in industry during a Mitacs sponsored partnership with affective computing company Maslo AI.

Research Interests

Oliver’s broad range of interests include visual perception, action-orientated theories of perception, sensorimotor activity, eye movements, aging, and cognitive decline.

Publications

Jacobs, O. L., Gazzaz, K., & Kingstone, A. (2022). Mind the robot! Variation in attributions of mind to a wide set of real and fictional robots. International Journal of Social Robotics, 14(2), 529-537.

Pazhoohi, F., Jacobs, O. L., & Kingstone, A. (2022). Contrapposto pose influences perceptions of attractiveness, masculinity, and dynamicity of male statues from antiquity. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 8(1), 46-55.

Jacobs, O. L. (2020). Into the unknown: Head-based selection is less dependent on peripheral information than gaze-based selection in 360 VR scenes (Master’s dissertation, University of British Columbia).

Notable honours

Killam Doctoral Fellowship

NSERC CGSM

Mitacs Accelerate