"maverick" and "sanctuary" - Thanks, Justin!
Encourages students to think creatively.
Encourages students to ask questions.
Inspires students to reach new heights.
Creates dynamic and engaging lessons.
Great Professor!
Dr. Justin Brienza serves as Senior Lecturer in the School of Business at the University of Queensland's Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, having joined UQ Business School in 2020 following his teaching role at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. He holds an Honors Bachelor of Science with majors in Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence and Psychology from the University of Toronto, and Master's and PhD degrees in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Waterloo. Brienza teaches courses such as Organisational Behaviour (MGTS1601), Manager Skills and Contemporary Business Communication and Organisation (MGTS2606), Wise Leadership (MGTS7618), and Research Design for Honours (RBUS6933), and supervises higher degree research students on topics including counterproductive knowledge behaviour in the workplace and managing sustainability-related multistakeholder conflicts using wisdom meta-frameworks.
His research focuses on how people reason through complex social problems to reduce bias, develop wisdom, and promote balance at interpersonal, group, organizational, and societal levels, with applications to cooperation, socioeconomic status, teamwork, intergroup bias, and leadership. Ongoing projects investigate dynamics of wise leadership, wisdom training for business and army leaders, media attention and science denialism, prejudice in artificial intelligence, self-sabotage, and gender pay-gap denialism. Brienza received the Kellogg School of Management's Dispute Resolution Center Scholar Award. Key publications include "Wise reasoning, intergroup positivity, and attitude polarization across contexts" (Nature Communications, 2021), "Wisdom, bias, and balance: toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition" (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2018), "Social class and wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts across regions, persons and situations" (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2017), "Wise deliberation sustains cooperation" (Nature Human Behaviour, 2017), "The science of wisdom in a polarized world: knowns and unknowns" (Psychological Inquiry, 2020), "Mind the gap: wise reasoning attenuates gender pay gap scepticism in men" (European Journal of Social Psychology, 2024), and "The wise voter in a civil democracy" (Political Science Quarterly, 2025). He serves as a peer reviewer for journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Social Psychological and Personality Science.