W. Michael Sayers, MSc is a research associate at the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, where he focuses on studying media portrayals relevant to health and mental health. The aim of these areas of focus is to generate a quantitative understanding of how different disease states and mental health conditions are depicted in film and television as well as the effects that these depictions have on their audiences. He has supported Dr. Smith in this work at the Cannes Film Festival, South by Southwest (SXSW), and many entertainment-focused events around Los Angeles.

Sayers graduated with a BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and completed his MSc in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. His thesis, published in Psychological Science, examined the effects of attempts to suppress cigarette craving. This included the design of an original, behavioral measure to assess attempts to suppress cigarette craving, thereby circumventing the need to rely solely on self-report data, which can be quite unreliable. After spending a few years in London at an innovation and insight agency working with clients such as Google, Samsung, and Land Rover, he returned to academia when he joined the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative in 2023.