Jacob T. Fisher

Assistant Professor Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Dr. Jacob T. Fisher's research is positioned at the intersection of digital technology, attention, and decision making.

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Michigan State University

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Biography

Dr. Jacob T. Fisher (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. His research is positioned at the intersection of digital technology, attention, and decision making. His current work in this area uses functional neuroimaging, behavioral and "big data" measures, and computational modeling to explore how effort requirements, perceptual complexity, and motivational factors in digital contexts influence attention and goal pursuit. He also conducts research in the domain of moral messaging, seeking to understand how morally-charged messages uniquely motivate attention and action at the individual and societal level.

Dr. Fisher's work has been published in Nature Human Behaviour, Journal of Communcation, Network Neuroscience, Media Psychology, and a number of other outlets. He is the current research chair for the Communication and Social Cognition division of the National Communication Association, and is an active member of the Communication Science and Biology Interest Group and the Computational Methods Division of the International Communication Association.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Network Analysis
Neuroscience
Media Psychology
Attention
Multitasking

Accomplishments

Rising Star Award

2023

International Communication Association, Communication Science & Biology Interest Group

Dean's Graduate Mentorship Award

2020

University of California Santa Barbara

James J. Bradac Award for Excellence in Research

2019

University of California, Santa Barbara

Education

The University of California, Santa Barbara

Ph.D.

Communication

2020

Texas Tech University

M.A.

Media and Communication

2016

Texas Tech University

B.A.

Honors Arts & Letters

2013

Affiliations

  • Communication Science and Biology Interest Group : Member
  • Computational Methods Division of the International Communication Association : Member

Event Appearances

What is "being there"? Developing an ontology of the immersive experience

Advertising in the Metaverse  St. Petersburg, FL

The shape of inspiration: Exploring the narrative trajectories and self-transcendent elicitors within inspirational movies

72nd annual meeting of the International Communication Association  Paris, France

Gamifying electromagnetism: Using virtual reality for classroom learning and assessment

American Society for Engineering Education  Minneapolis, MN

Research Grants

Building an Adaptable Self-guided STEM Learning Experience Using Virtual Reality

NSF Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL)

2021

Laboratory Effects in Experimental Games

Sandia National Labs

2021

Learning by Immersion: Creating Virtual Reality Labs for Electromagnetism Courses

University of Illinois Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP)

2021

Journal Articles

Moral foundations elicit shared and dissociable cortical activation modulated by political ideology

nature human behaviour

2023

Moral foundations theory (MFT) holds that moral judgements are driven by modular and ideologically variable moral foundations but where and how these foundations are represented in the brain and shaped by political beliefs remains an open question. Using a moral vignette judgement task (n = 64), we probed the neural (dis)unity of moral foundations.

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Mapping attention across multiple media tasks

Media Psychology

2022

Paying attention to media requires continuously selecting and processing relevant information while filtering out numerous competing stimuli. Although the factors that drive attention toward or away from a single media task are relatively well characterized, there is a lack of understanding regarding how attention to media functions in the presence of multiple, concurrent tasks. In this manuscript, we report findings from four experiments investigating this question.

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Social media and well-being: A methodological perspective

Current Opinion in Psychology

2022

Due to the methodological challenges inherent in studying social media use (SMU), as well as the methodological choices that have shaped research into the effects of SMU on well-being, clear conclusions regarding relationships between SMU and well-being remain elusive.

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