Stanford Psychology Podcast

Bella chats with professor Russ Poldrack.

Russ is the Albert Ray Lang professor of psychology at Stanford University, where he directs the Poldrack lab. Russ also serves as the director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience and the SDS center for Open and Reproducible science. Russ and his lab use cognitive, computational, and neuroimaging approaches to study how decision-making, executive control, and learning and memory are implemented in the human brain.

In this episode, we discussed Russ's research in cognitive neuroscience using neuroimaging techniques such as MRI and fMRI, as well as his effort and contribution to reproducible science. For example, along with colleagues, Russ created and is currently managing a platform called Openneuro, an Open Archive For Analysis And Sharing Of Brain Initiative Data. Russ also talked about an innovative and fascinating study called “My connectome project”, in which he was his own subject for 18 months. He then shared interesting findings from this project and how this project had impacted how he thinks about his brain and future neuroimaging research. 

In the end, Russ shared his advice and tips with people who are applying to graduate school in neuroscience, as well as a fun story about discovering a surprising finding in his own brain.

If you find this episode interesting, please leave us a good review on your podcast platform! It only takes a few minutes, but it will allow our podcast to reach more people and hopefully get them excited about psychology and brain sciences.

Links:
Russ's lab: https://poldracklab.stanford.edu/
Russ’s Twitter: @russpoldrack
Russ’s books:
- Hard to Break: why our brains make habits stick https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691194325/hard-to-brea
- The New Mind Readers https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691178615/the-new-mind-readers

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/
Bella's Twitter: @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
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Anjie chats with Dr. Johannes Eichstaedt,  an Assistant Professor in Psychology, and the Shriram Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University. Johannes directs the Computational Psychology and Well-Being lab. His research focuses on using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, …) to measure the psychological states of large populations and individuals to determine the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that drive physical illness (like heart disease), depression, or support psychological well-being.  In this episode, Anjie and Johannes chat about how social media could be a lens to understand mental illnesses such as depression. Johannes also shares his thoughts on the emerging trends in social media, and how some powerful technocrats in Silicon Valley might have some huge blind spots in understanding human nature. 

 If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substackand consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links: 

 Johannes’s paper: Eichstaedt, J. C., Smith, R. J., Merchant, R. M., Ungar, L. H., Crutchley, P., Preoţiuc-Pietro, D., ... & Schwartz, H. A. (2018). Facebook language predicts depression in medical records. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(44), 11203-11208.

Johannes’s Twitter: @JEichstaedt

Johannes’s lab website: https://cpwb.stanford.edu/

Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
 

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Eric chats with Juliana Schroeder, Associate Professor in the Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas. She studies how people think about the minds of other people, and how they are often wrong trying to understand what others are up to. Her work has been discussed in outlets ranging from Vice to The Atlantic and Forbes.

In this episode, Eric and Juliana chat review her exciting recent work on “undersociality.” Talking to other people is often meaningful, not just for extraverts, and yet we hesitate to talk to others, making overly pessimistic predictions about how awkward and unpleasant such interactions would be. This leads us to “mistakenly seek solitude.” Juliana discusses what we can do to motivate ourselves to talk to others more, why that is so beneficial, and why she herself struggles to do it.

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Links:

Juliana's review paper on undersociality: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661322000432?casa_token=KI1Vjeg9NKUAAAAA:aTAEDP2eF1ay3I0rGI74FHNW21s83r_KvXCQMvr5auCxaVnhEah82tbASwjzwfc-68D54q8Kc2E 

Juliana's key empirical paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/a0037323 

Juliana's Twitter

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Anjie chats with Dr. Maria Arredondo, Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, and the Department of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin. Maria studies how infants, toddlers, and school-age children acquire their language(s). She is especially interested in why some children can become proficient bilinguals, while others struggle. 

In this episode, Anjie and Maria discuss how learning two languages simultaneously can influence babies’ cognitive development. Maria also shared her journey in doing infant research and the challenges and joys of studying babies’ brains.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe to our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Maria’s paper: 

Arredondo, M. M., Aslin, R. N., Zhang, M., & Werker, J. F. (2022). Attentional orienting abilities in bilinguals: Evidence from a large infant sample. Infant Behavior and Development, 66, 101683.

Arredondo, M. M., Aslin, R. N., & Werker, J. F. (2022). Bilingualism alters infants’ cortical organization for attentional orienting mechanisms. Developmental Science, 25(2), e13172.

Maria’s Twitter @MMArredondo_

Maria’s lab website: https://sites.utexas.edu/childslab/

Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Eric chats with Tessa West, Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University. Tessa is a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Her work has been covered by various outlets such as the New York Times and Time Magazine. She is most recently the author of “Jerks at Work: Toxic coworkers and what to do about them.”

In this episode, Eric and Tessa chat about why some people are jerks at work. How do you deal with them? Are there more jerks at work now than in the past? Can we find jerks in all cultures around the world? How can we detect jerks? Who is most likely to be taken advantage of by jerks at work? On the flipside of jerks, how can you turn coworkers into friends? Finally, Tessa talks about what it was like to write a trade book, whether that is harder than writing scientific papers, and how she tries to be optimistic about people despite this dark research topic.

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Links:

Tessa's book
Tessa's website
Tessa's Twitter @TessaWestNYU

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Bella chats with professor Julia Leonard. Julia is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Yale University, where she directs the Leonard Learning Lab. Julia and her lab use cognitive, developmental, and computational approaches to study the factors that support both children's approach to learning and their capacity to learn. 

In this episode, we discussed Julia's recent research on young children's persistence and the role that caretakers and teachers play in influencing the growth of children's persistence. Although the studies were done with children, you'll be surprised by how much insight her research can bring to all of us, even as adults! We also discussed the challenges we face in children's education and fostering environments that encourage the growth of children's persistence. In the end, Julia shares her personal stories about applying to graduate school and some important advice to anyone interested in pursuing a career in academia.

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Links:
Julia's paper on young children's persistence
Julia's Twitter: @julia_a_leonard
Leonard Learning Lab Twitter: @LeonardLearnLab

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/
Bella's Twitter @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you think of this episode or the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Eric chats with Robin Dunbar, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford. Robin has famously studied the evolution of the human brain, arguing that our brain developed to understand the complex social world we have created for ourselves. Most know him for “Dunbar’s number,” or the limit to the number of individuals we can maintain stable relationships with. Robin has received more awards than could be counted, including the prestigious Huxley Memorial Medal. He has written various books, most relevant for this conversation a book called “Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationship.”

In this wide-ranging episode, Eric and Robin discuss why Dunbar’s number is actually a whole series of numbers. Robin explains how he arrived at this number, why it is so relevant to everything from our globalized world and big cities to maintaining friendships. Do psychopaths need friends to be happy? If you don’t like people, should you move into the woods and never talk to anyone again? He explains why we gossip and what makes something funny. Finally, he shares some personal stories about his career and why his discovery of Dunbar’s number was actually an accident.

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Links:

Robin's Friendship book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/friends-robin-dunbar/1138785864
Robin's most recent book on religion: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/316135/how-religion-evolved-by-dunbar-robin/9780241431788

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Next Thursday and Friday, October 27th and 28th, the first-ever Big Team Science Conference (BTS-CON for short) will be held virtually. The goal of BTSCON is to bring multidisciplinary groups of researchers, funders, and stakeholders to discuss advancements, challenges, and future opportunities related to big team science. The conference program spans two days, including a mixture of symposia, panels, hackathons, and talks. If you are new to this topic, you will find this episode particularly relevant. In this episode that aired earlier this year, Anjie chats with Dr. Nicholas Coles, the Director of Psychological Science Accelerator and one of the many amazing organizers behind BTSCON. They talked a little bit about what big team science is, and what are some real challenges that BTS practitioners would encounter.

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Links:

BTSCON official page: https://bigteamscienceconference.github.io/

Register now: https://opencollective.com/psysciacc/events/test-event-23392c94/contribute/registration-2022-big-team-science-conference-40278

Full conference program: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17m6t7or53uvFErIW_WHvegwlwV2Cq_rvG5ny-4cBkpM/edit?usp=sharing

The paper discussed: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00150-2%0D?error=server_error

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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We are revisiting a special episode in celebration of the upcoming Paths to PhD event. Each year, Stanford's psychology department hosts Paths to PhD, a free, open-to-public information session on how to apply to PhD programs and research positions in psychology. This year’s event is scheduled to happen this Saturday, October 15th from 10:00 am-5:00 pm, and so far we have over three hundred people who signed up and are going to join us from across the world. In this episode that we did a year ago, we invited Lauren and Camilla, two graduate students who were pivotal figures in the shaping of this event.

If you are a graduate student, a postdoc, or a faculty member who is interested in bringing an event like this into your department, you might find this episode to be particularly relevant. And if you are a past, current, or future applicant interested in learning more about the behind-the-scene of this event, you will also find this episode to be interesting. We talked about what this event is about, how it came to be, what will happen in the future,  as well as the joy and challenges of organizing and planning events like Path to PhD.

Event page: https://psychology.stanford.edu/diversity/paths-phd

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Links:

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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Eric chats with Shai Davidai, Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His research examines people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies perceptions of inequality and competitive, zero-sum beliefs about the world. Shai received his PhD from Cornell under Tom Gilovich’s supervision. His work has been published in various top-tier journals.

In this episode, Eric and Shai discuss how people pursue status. When do people seek status through dominant aggressive bullying and when do they receive it due to their competence and a good character? Shai’s work reveals the role of zero-sum beliefs: people who believe one person’s gain is another’s loss choose more dominant strategies to gain status. Is this an adaptive response? Can such zero-sum perceptions be inaccurate and, even worse, self-fulfilling? What’s the way out of competitive zero-sum cultures? Shai shares how he stays optimistic despite such depressing research interests, discusses being an international scholar living in the US, and gives advice to his younger grad student self. He finally poses a puzzle for the listener: would you rather be extremely smart or extremely kind?

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Links:

Shai's paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-89563-001
Shai's website

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Anjie chats with Dr. Viridiana Benitez, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. Viridiana directs the Learning and Development Lab and studies how children learn about the world around them. In this episode, Anjie and Viridiana chat about one facet of learning: how predictability helps young children learn words.

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Links:

Viridiana’s paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982218307796?via%3Dihub
Viridiana’s lab website: https://www.learndevlab.org/

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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Eric chats with Claude Steele, Emeritus Lucie Stern Professor of Psychology at Stanford. He is world-renowned for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. In 2010, he released his book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, summarizing years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education. He is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was Vice Chancellor and Provost at Berkeley and provost at Columbia and served as President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

In this episode, Eric and Claude chat about Claude’s most recent thinking about stereotype threat, where people fear fulfilling stereotypes about their social groups. When and why does it matter? How can we create more inclusive and non-threatening environments, from work contexts to classrooms? What does it have to do with Carol Dweck’s growth mindset? Claude proposes that trust is essential to reduce stereotype threat: when people trust they are not judged for their social groups, they perform better. Finally, Claude shares how his growing up on the South Side of Chicago still influences his thinking, how he circuitously stumbled into psychology – and what it was like having Ted Bundy as one of his students!

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Links:

Claude's book: https://wwnorton.com/books/Whistling-Vivaldi/
Claude's website

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Joseph chats with Anne Scheel. Anne is currently a postdoc at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam but will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Methodology and Statistics at Utrecht University in mid October. Anne is a meta-scientist who is interested in which research and publication practices can improve the reproducibility of the published literature, and how researchers can be encouraged to design more falsifiable and informative studies. She did her PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology, followed by a postdoc project at VU Amsterdam and CWTS Leiden.
 
In this episode we chat about her recent publications in which she argues that most claims in the psychology literature are so critically underspecified that attempts to empirically evaluate them are doomed to failure. She also argues that researchers should focus more on non-confirmatory research activities to obtain the inputs necessary to make hypothesis tests informative.

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Links

Anne’s papers:

Scheel, A. M. (2022). Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong. Infant and Child Development, 31(1), e2295

Scheel, A. M., Tiokhin, L., Isager, P. M., & Lakens, D. (2021). Why hypothesis testers should spend less time testing hypotheses. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(4), 744-755

Paper on strategic ambiguity: Frankenhuis, W., Panchanathan, K., & Smaldino, P. E. (2022). Strategic ambiguity in the social sciences

Anne’s Twitter @annemscheel
Anne’s blog 100% CI

Joseph’s Twitter @outa_joseph

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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Eric chats with Carol Dweck and Matt Dixon. Carol is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford, world-renowned for her work on fixed and growth mindsets. Her nearly 40-page long CV could not possibly be summarized here and includes prestigious awards such as the Yidan Prize for Education Research and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. Matt is a postdoc at Stanford working with Carol and James Gross. He studies the psychological and biological basis of motivation, decision-making, and emotion regulation strategy use in healthy and clinical populations.

In this episode, Carol and Matt discuss their recent paper on the neuroscience of intelligent decision-making. Have we misunderstood – and underestimated – the role of the amygdala? Is our prefrontal cortex as important as we think? What even makes a decision intelligent? Throughout the chat, Carol and Matt propose a new conceptualization of intelligence that includes human motivation, not just abstract problem-solving skills. Eric asks them about clinical applications and how their work casts a more positive, a more understanding light on why adolescents are the way they are. Finally, they share advice for young scholars.

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Links:

Paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Frev0000339
Carol’s book Mindset: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/44330/mindset-by-carol-s-dweck-phd/ 

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Joseph chats with Chaz Firestone, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Chaz’s lab studies how we see and think, and how seeing and thinking interact to produce sophisticated behavior. Recent projects in his lab have explored how our minds generate physical intuitions about the world, and other foundational questions about the nature of perception. Chaz has been named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, and this year was awarded the Stanton Prize by the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, which recognizes one young scholar who has made significant contributions to research at the intersection of psychology and the philosophy of mind. 

In this episode Chaz talks about his recent publication in Psychological Science titled "Melting ice with your mind: Representational momentum for physical states”. The study found that participants who viewed objects undergoing state changes (e.g., ice melting, logs burning) remember them as more changed than they actually were. Chaz discusses the implications of these findings for our theories of event perception and memory.

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Links
Chaz & colleagues’ paper *Hafri, A., *Boger, T., & Firestone, C. (2022). Melting ice with your mind: Representational momentum for physical states. Psychological Science, 33(5), 725-735
Chaz’s Twitter @chazfirestone

Joseph's website josephouta.com
Joseph’s Twitter @outa_joseph

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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Eric chats with Robb Willer, Professor of Sociology, Psychology, and Organizational Behavior, and the Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford University. Robb is also the co-Director of Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. He studies social forces that bring people together (such as morality and altruism), forces that divide them (such as fear and prejudice), and domains of social life that feature the complex interplay of the two (such as hierarchies and politics). Robb has published in top journals across different fields, and his lab’s work has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Vox, and Washington Post.

In this episode, Eric chats with Robb about his latest work on false meta-perceptions. This line of work suggests something counter-intuitive: Democrats and Republicans might overestimate how violent the other party is. Such misguided perceptions can become self-fulfilling: each party risks reacting with violence to the overly violent picture they have painted of the outgroup. Robb also shares how he knows what research ideas to pursue and what other projects he is excited about these days. Finally, he talks about his less-than-straightforward journey into psychology and gives advice on how to teach psychology in a fun and engaging way.

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Links:

Robb's Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2116851119
Robb's Strengthening Democracy Challenge: https://www.strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org/paper

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Anjie chats with Dr. Kevin Binning, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Kevin studies diversity and equity in education, with the aim to both understand and improve pressing societal problems.

In this episode, Anjie and Kevin chat about the background, the mechanism, and the future of interventions in the classroom that can help foster equity in college science courses.

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Links:

Kevin’s paper on ecological intervention: Binning, K. R., Kaufmann, N., McGreevy, E. M., Fotuhi, O., Chen, S., Marshman, E., ... & Singh, C. (2020). Changing social contexts to foster equity in college science courses: An ecological-belonging intervention. Psychological Science, 31(9), 1059-1070.

Kevin’s website: https://sites.pitt.edu/~kbinning/

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
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Eric chats with Susan Fiske, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University. Susan is one of the world’s leading scholars studying social cognition, having written more than 400 articles and chapters as well as several books, including Envy Up, Scorn Down, and The Human Brand. She has won more awards than could possibly be listed, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award. Susan’s biography is currently being highlighted in the 40 Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine exhibit at the National Academy of Sciences, to which she was elected in 2013. 

In this episode, Eric asks Susan about her latest work on how diverse environments paradoxically make us see different ethnic groups as more, not less similar. In the second half of the chat, Susan reveals why she brings exotic chocolate to lab meetings and how to find a research idea worth pursuing. She talks about her complicated journey into academia and how she developed her influential stereotype content model. She discusses the importance of female role models and the obstacles women face in academia. As if that is not exciting enough, she even gives dating advice!

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Links:

Susan's paper on stereotype dispersion: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2000333117
Susan's book on envy and scorn: https://www.russellsage.org/publications/envy-scorn-down-1
Susan's book on marketing psychology: https://thehumanbrand.com/ 

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Bella chats with professor Moira (Molly) Dillon.

Molly is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at New York University, where she directs the Lab for the Developing Mind. Molly and her lab use cognitive, developmental, and computational approaches to study infant cognition, including the early emerging knowledge about objects, people, and places; symbolic thought and reasoning in geometry and logic; pictorial and linguistic production, and the relation between human cognition and machine intelligence. 

In this episode, we discussed Molly's new research on commonsense psychology in human infants and how this research helps advance our understanding of machine intelligence. Be ready to be amazed by what human infants are capable of understanding and doing.

WE NOW HAVE A SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It only takes a second, but it will allow our podcast to reach more people and hopefully get them excited about psychology.

Links
Molly's paper on Commonsense Psychology in Human Infants and Machines:
The Lab for the Developing Mind website
Molly's Twitter @MoiraDillon

Bella's website
Bella's Twitter @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode or the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Eric chats with Dan Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Dan is captivated by a single fact—the world is not as it appears—and he uses science to uncover the illusions people have about the world, themselves, and each other. He is a contributor to Time, The New York Times, and NPR's All Things Considered, and in 2014 Science named him one of the world’s 50 most-followed scientists on social media. His TED talks have been seen by more than 15 million people and remain among the most popular of all time. His popular book, Stumbling on Happiness, spent 6 months on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over a million copies worldwide.

In this episode, Eric asks Dan about his life journey from high-school dropout to one of the most respected psychologists alive. What was Dan like as a child? How did he combine his passion for science fiction writing with an academic career? Dan shares how much his life was, and is, shaped by the people around him. How did he end up in such fruitful collaborations with people like Dan Wegner or Tim Wilson? What was it like writing a popular science book, at a time when that was much less common than now? What is Dan’s advice on teaching and writing? How does he decide an idea is worth pursuing?

WE NOW HAVE A SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Dan's book Stumbling on Happiness
Dan's website
Dan's Twitter @DanTGilbert

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Joseph chats with Dr. Jordan Starck. Jordan is an IDEAL Provostial Fellow at Stanford University. His research focuses on the reasons organizations embrace diversity, examining the psychological factors shaping people’s preferred approaches and the downstream consequences of different approaches. In this episode they chat about diversity. What reasons do entities like universities give for proclaiming to embrace diversity and inclusion? To what extent do these reasons correspond to educational outcomes? 

Links:

You can find the paper we discussed here

Jordan's Twitter @JStarck4

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Eric chats with Mina Cikara, Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where she directs the Intergroup Neuroscience Lab. The lab uses social psychological and cognitive neuroscience approaches to study how group membership and prejudice change the course of social cognition, studying phenomena such as schadenfreude, empathy, and dehumanization. Mina’s work has been covered in outlets such as the New York Times and Time Magazine.

In this episode, Eric chats with Mina about her latest work on hate crimes in the US. Specifically, Mina argues that as a minority group grows larger than other minority groups, it faces more negative attitudes and hate crimes. Mina chats about how these findings might contrast with the essentialism literature, where a minority group would be attributed certain fixed traits. She then shares how she sees social psychology progress as a discipline, and what she would like to see in the future. Finally, Mina gives advice for young scholars in the field and discusses how to find an idea worth pursuing.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Mina's Paper: https://osf.io/2z3kw/
Mina's Twitter @profcikara

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Bella chats with professor Mimi Liljeholm.

Mimi is an associate professor in the department of cognitive sciences at the University of California, Irvine, where she directs the Learning and Decision Neuroscience Lab. Mimi and her lab study a broad range of topics, including agency, causal induction, habits, altruism, and social transmission. She is interested in studying how humans discover and represent the predictive structure of their environment, how such knowledge shapes cognition, perception, and motivated behavior, and how these processes go awry in addiction and psychopathology. In addition, Mimi adopts a multidisciplinary approach and draws a wide range of methods from psychology, neuroscience, economics, statistics, and computer science.

In this episode, we discussed Mimi's research on agency, instrumental divergence, social conformity, and how these constructs apply in our daily life. We also discussed how Mimi's current research helps us further understand artificial intelligence and what researchers can do in future studies. In the end, Mimi shared a take-home message with the audience for people interested in psychology and students who wish to pursue a career as a psychologist or neuroscientist.

You can find the paper that Mimi discussed in this episode here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.04.004.

To learn more about Mimi's research you can visit her lab at: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/LDNLab/

Joseph chats with Dr. Jay Van Bavel, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at the New York University. His research examines how collective concerns namely group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—shape the mind, brain, and behavior. In this episode we chat about his new book titled “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”.

You can find Jay and Dominic’s book here: https://www.powerofus.online/

You can also find him in on twitter @jayvanbavel

To learn more about Jay’s research you can visit his lab website, the Social Identity and Morality Lab: https://www.jayvanbavel.com/lab

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Anjie chats with Dr. Elika Bergelson. Elika is a Crandall Family Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.  Her research aims to understand the interplay of processes during language acquisition. In this episode, Elika shares a recent perspective piece titled: “The comprehension boost in early word learning: Older infants are better learners”. Elika talks about how babies learn words, and how researchers get to know what babies know. 

You can read the article we discussed here: 

https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdep.12373

To learn more about Elika’s research, you can visit her lab’s website: https://bergelsonlab.com/

or follow them on twitter @bergelsonlab). 

Eric chats with Michael Kraus, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management. Michael’s lab studies what behaviors and emotions maintain and perpetuate economic and social inequality in society. Michael’s research has appeared in Psychological Review, Perspectives on Psychological Science, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In this episode, Michael talks about his recent work on how much US-Americans overestimate how equal their country is. For example, why are some people motivated to deny the vast wealth inequality between Whites and African Americans? Michael then shares how he has successfully intervened to make people’s estimates somewhat more accurate. Finally, Eric asks Michael about advice for young researchers and how he comes up with interesting research ideas. If that is not exciting enough, Michael even performs a power analysis live on the podcast! But not of the statistical kind…

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Michael's paper
Michael's Twitter @mwkraus

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com 

Joseph chats with Dr. Kurt Gray about what drives our moral judgments, how we reason about the morality of non-human agents, the factors underlying moral disagreement and how we can bridge partisan animosity. Dr. Gray is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he runs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. His lab investigates people’s deepest beliefs and why they matter for society and organizations.

Here are ideas and resources referenced in the chat:
3:52 | Moral Foundations Theory
6:25 | Theory of Dyadic Morality
7:42 | The Myth of Harmless Wrongs
16:36 | Mind Perception of Robots
19:45 | Center for the Science of Moral Understanding
36:00:00 | Moral Character Judgements
37:15:00 | Moral Identity picture scale
38:00:00 | Personal experiences bridge divides better than facts
44:45:00 | Six Guidelines for Interesting Research

To learn more about Kurt and his research, check out his lab website:  https://www.deepestbeliefslab.com/

You can also follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/kurtjgray

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Anjie chats with Dr. Nicholas Coles. Nicholas is a Research Scientist at Stanford University, the co-director of the Stanford Big Team Science Lab, and the Director of the Psychological Science Accelerator. He conducts research in affective science, cross-cultural psychology, and meta-science.

In affective science, Nicholas seeks to understand the social, cognitive, and physiological processes that underlie emotion. Much of his research here has focused on the facial feedback hypothesis, the idea that sensorimotor feedback from facial expressions can impact emotional processes (e.g., that smiling can make people feel happy). In meta-science, Nicholas works on building research infrastructure that allows researchers to more efficiently obtain knowledge about psychological phenomenon. In this domain, he directs the Psychological Science Accelerator: a globally distributed consortium of researchers who pool intellectual and material resources to accelerate the accumulation of generalizable knowledge in psychology.

In this episode, Anjie and Nicholas chat about a recent comment piece in Nature titled "Build up big team science".  They take a deep dive into an emerging trend in psychology – research done by a lot of people across a lot of labs. Nicholas shares the challenges, along with the promises of big team science.

You can read the comment we discussed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00150-2%0D?error=server_error
To learn more about Nicholas's research, you can visit his website: https://nicholas-coles.netlify.app/
Or you can also follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/coles_nicholas_
To learn more about PSA, here's the link to its website: https://psysciacc.org/ 

In this episode, Eric chats with Dave about trust. Who do we trust? How accurate are we in assessing another’s trustworthiness? Why do we sometimes trust people we think to be selfish? Why do we distrust people who are actually kind? What does trust have to do with respect? Is our kindness actually driven be negative, not positive emotions? Finally, Dave shares how to find a research idea worth pursuing and gives general advice for young academics curious about a career in psychology.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Dave's paper on trust
Dave's paper on respect
Dave's Twitter @daviddunning6

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Joseph chats with Dr. Marlone Henderson about how people think about the burdens and benefits of giving time to charity. They also talk about people’s moral evaluations of volunteering and how journal guidelines may incentivize production of theoretical versus practical research. Dr. Henderson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. His research aims at understanding the role that basic cognitive processes play in promoting social harmony in the domains of social conflict, social judgment and prosocial behavior.

To learn more about Dr. Henderson’s research, you can visit his profile here https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology/faculty/profile.php?eid=mdh2449

You can find the paper we discussed here:

Henderson, M. D., Jung, H., M Baker, E., & Wakslak, C. J. (2021). Anticipated effort and morality of segregated versus aggregated volunteering. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 34(5), 611-624

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Anjie chats with Dr. Tiffany N. Brannon, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. She directs Culture and Contact Lab. Her research examines socio-cultural identities in negatively stereotyped groups such as African-Americans and Latino-Americans; and she investigates the potential for these identities to serve as a psychological resource— one that can facilitate a variety of individual and intergroup benefits. In this episode, we discuss her recent article titled “Pride and Prejudice” Pathways to Belonging: Implications for Inclusive Diversity Practices Within Mainstream Institution”. We also chat about what insights qualitative methods could bring us.
 
You can check out the paper we discussed here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-58577-001
To learn more about Dr. Brannon’s research, you can visit her lab’s website: https://ccl.psych.ucla.edu/

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Joseph chats with Dr. Lasana Harris about how using traits rather than stereotypes when thinking about strangers can help combat social bias. They also address questions like when is it useful to make a situational versus a dispositional attribution, what are the differences between social and personality psychology, and some advice for academics entering psychology.

Dr. Harris is a Professor of Social Neuroscience in Experimental Psychology at University College London. He got his undergraduate degree from Howard University and his phD from Princeton University. His research uses a social neuroscience approach to explore the neural correlates of person perception, prejudice, dehumanization, anthropomorphism, social learning, social emotions, empathy, and punishment. He published a book in 2017 titled Invisible Mind: Flexible Social Cognition and Dehumanization. 

Paper link: Harris, L. T. (2021). Leveraging cultural narratives to promote trait inferences rather than stereotype activation during person perception. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(6), e12598

Dr. Harris’ personal website: https://lt-harris.info/

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Bella chats with Dr. Henrike (Henny) Moll.

Henny is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, where she directs the Minds in Development lab. Henny's primary research focus lies in children's understanding of perspectives and their ability to engage in joint attention. She studies how infants and young children come to understand the world and the role that others play in introducing them to the world. Her studies are informed by insights from philosophy of mind, education, and anthropology.

In this episode, we discussed Henny's research on theory of mind, young children's perspective taking, especially when other people's beliefs clash with their own beliefs or with reality, and how the concept of experiential record plays an important role in children's ability to understand other people's beliefs. Henny also shared the lab's future directions and some exciting upcoming projects. 

Henny's website: https://dornsife.usc.edu/labs/mid-la/

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Joseph speaks with Prof. Anuj Shah about a lab experiment on social perceptions, in particular how when we learn a few details about a stranger, we seem to feel like they know and understand us too. They also talk about a field experiment in the New York City housing developments which affected social perceptions and was linked to lower rates of crime after people were provided with some details about neighborhood police officers. 

Anuj is an associate professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. His research uses psychology and behavioral science to examine social issues such as poverty, youth violence, and crime.

Shah, A. K., & LaForest, M. (2022). Knowledge about others reduces one’s own sense of anonymity. Nature, 603(7900), 297-301.

Anuj’s personal website: http://theslab.uchicago.edu/anuj/
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Eric chats with Vanessa Bohns, social psychologist and Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University. Vanessa studies how people influence one another, and how they can underestimate how much influence they really have. Vanessa has been a Visiting Scholar at the NYU Stern School of Business and has taught at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.

In this episode, Eric and Vanessa chat about Vanessa’s first book You Have More Influence Than You Think, published in September 2021. Vanessa discusses why people are often blind to how much of an impact they have on others. Are there occasions where people overestimate their influence? Does influence come with responsibility? Are there gender effects? Vanessa also mentions her related line of research on underestimating the kindness of strangers. Why are people often kinder than we expect? Finally, Vanessa shares her experience with writing a book as an academic and gives advice for others who consider writing a book.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Vanessa's book
Vanessa's Twitter @profbohns

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Joseph and Ashley talk about how infants, toddlers and children think about social relationships, how they track who is connected and how they are connected, what we can learn about children from studying animal behavior, and how children in other cultures might think differently about social relationships.

Dr. Ashley Thomas is a postdoctoral researcher in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT). She is interested in what infants, toddlers and children think and feel about social relationships and social intimacy. She also investigates adults moral judgments and asks questions like where do moral norms come from and how do they change? Ashley is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Research on Open and Equitable Scholarship at MIT.

The fantastic Science paper that was referenced: Thomas, A. J., Woo, B., Nettle, D., Spelke, E., & Saxe, R. (2022). Early concepts of intimacy: young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships. Science, 375(6578), 311-315

To learn more about Ashley's research please visit her personal website and her lab's website.

Her twitter handle is @AshleyJ_Thomas

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Eric chats with Robert Rosenthal, Professor of Psychology at University of California Riverside. Bob is the former Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard. Bob has gained worldwide fame for his work on self-fulfilling prophecies: “When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.”

Over 50 years ago, Bob introduced the Pygmalion Effect many psychology students now read about in their textbooks: when teachers expect certain students to be smart, those students actually become smarter. In this episode, Eric asks Bob about the current state of the evidence around the Pygmalion Effect. Bob discloses that he only started his work on self-fulfilling prophecies because of accidental analyses in his work. Bob relates his work to growth mindsets and speculates about self-fulfilling prophecies when judging another’s moral character.

He also discusses what is now called the Rosenthal Effect: experimenters’ expectations of their studies can influence the actual study outcomes. What methodological and statistical advances in psychology is he excited about? What does he think of the current reproducibility crisis? Are we misunderstanding meta-analyses? Finally, Bob shares advice for young scientists and ends with a forceful appeal to the beauty and privilege of learning about psychology.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

One of Bob's papers on the Pygmalion Effect

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

In this episode, Anjie chats with Dr. Angie Johnston, who is currently an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College, where she directs the Canine Cognition Center and Social Learning Laboratory.  Her works take a comparative approach: comparing human learning to domestic dogs’ learning, as a way to examine which aspects of human learning are unique and which are shared among species. In this episode, we are going to talk about one of her recent works that try to answer a question that many dog owners may have: why does my dog sometimes look back at me?

You can check out the paper we discuss here: Johnston, A. M., Chang, L. W., Wharton, K., & Santos, L. R. (2021). Dogs (Canis familiaris) prioritize independent exploration over looking back. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 135(3), 370.

To learn more about Angie’s research, you can visit her personal website and her lab’s website.  She is also on Twitter as @AngieMJohnston

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 Eric chats with Molly Crockett, Associate Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Molly studies how people make moral decisions, both in the lab and in everyday life. Their lab’s research has won numerous awards around the world, and Molly will be moving their lab to Princeton University in summer 2022.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Molly first chats about their recent work on social media. Are online platforms making us more outraged? How should we reshape social media for a more civil society? Then, Molly discusses another line of work on trust in leaders around the globe during Covid. Do people like or dislike utilitarian leaders? What was Molly's rather adventurous experience running a registered report proposing data collection across six continents? Finally, Molly chats about academic life more broadly. Should we favor slow over fast science? Are current academic incentives damaging to our mental health?

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Paper on social media and outrage
Paper on trust in leaders during Covid
Molly's Twitter @mollycrockett

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Kate chats with Gillian Sandstrom, a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Kindness at the University of Sussex and the Director of the Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness. Gillian’s work focuses on the benefits of minimal social interactions with “weak ties” and strangers, and the barriers that prevent people from connecting with others. In this episode, Gillian tells Kate about the misconceptions that prevent people from talking to strangers and the surprising benefits that can come from engaging in fleeting interactions with strangers, even if we will never see them again. 

Check out Gillian’s paper, Why do people avoid talking to strangers? A mini meta-analysis of predicted fears and actual experiences talking to a stranger, which received an Honorable Mention in the Journal of Self and Identity’s 2021 Best Paper Award, here.

You can learn more about Gillian’s exciting research on her website: gilliansandstrom.com. You can also connect with her directly on Twitter @GillianSocial.

--

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Eric chats with Diego Gambetta, social scientist and Carlo Alberto Chair at the University of Turin. Diego has studied topics as diverse as trust, the mafia, and violent extremism. His work has been widely cited around the world. Diego has held past appointments at numerous universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, and Stanford.

In this episode, Eric and Diego chat about trust, distrust, and cynicism. Diego explains what it means to trust someone, and how distrust is more complex than a mere absence of trust. Whom do we trust and why? Can we trust our instincts? Is trust always desirable? Does everyone want to be seen as a trustworthy person? How does the Mafia manage to cooperate despite its distrustful outlook? Finally, Diego responds to Eric’s research ideas on cynicism. How to build trust among the most cynical? Are some people just hopelessly distrustful?

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Book Codes of the Underworld
Paper on trust

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Joseph Outa chats with Professor Fiery Cushman, professor of psychology at Harvard University. Fiery directs the Moral Psychology Research Lab where he investigates how people make decisions in social contexts; he focuses on questions like why and how did punishment evolve, what are the emotional systems that prevent us from doing harm, and how do humans make sense of each other’s behaviors. He received his BA and PhD from Harvard University and has been bestowed with various awards and fellowships including the APA Distinguished Award for Early Career Contributions, the Stanton Prize from the Society of Philosophy and Psychology, just to name a few. He has written over 50 journal articles and is published in prestigious journals like Cognition, Psychological Science and the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and his research has been continuously funded by organizations such as NSF, the Templeton Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. 

In this episode, Joseph and Fiery talk about an unpublished manuscript titled "The Possibility of Violence" which examines how our morals constrain the possibilities we consider when making decisions, as well as a case study of a violence-reduction program in the Chicago Public School system.

Eric chats with Jon Jachimowicz, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. Jon studies people’s passion for work, specifically how people can pursue, fall out of, and maintain their passion over time. He also studies how people perceive inequality. Jon has won numerous academic awards and was listed as a Poets & Quants 40 under 40 honoree and Forbes 30 under 30.

In this episode, Eric and Jon chat about passion narratives at work and in life more generally. Jon discusses his new, not-yet-published research on how passion one day can lead to more work on that day but cause exhaustion the next day. Jon argues that people do not have a fixed level of passion and that the link between passion and productivity is more complex than we might think. He then discusses how to maintain passion in the long run, at work and outside of work. Should we even pursue our passions? What does it mean to engage in “passion shaming”? How can passion narratives lead to more inequality? Do passion narratives vary across the world?

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Jon's website
Jon's Twitter @jonj

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Kate chats with Ethan Kross, an award-winning professor of Psychology and Management & Organizations at the University of Michigan, and the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. Ethan’s research focuses on the inner conversations people have with themselves and the impacts of such conversations on health and well-being. 

In this episode, Ethan shares insights from his best-selling book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. Ethan talks about the  reasons why we all silently talk to ourselves, explains how our inner conversations can go awry, and shines light on some of the powerful tools we can use to harness our inner voices.  Ethan also discusses a new project in which he partnered with curriculum experts to bring the science of the brain and mind into the classroom.

Check out Chatter: https://www.ethankross.com/chatter/

Learn more about Ethan and his work: https://www.ethankross.com

Eric chats with Tom Gilovich, Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. Tom’s Judgment and Belief Lab studies how people evaluate the evidence of their everyday experience to make judgments, form beliefs, and decide on courses of action. Why do people make seemingly wrong decisions? When do they misread evidence? Tom’s research has been widely cited around the world, and he is the author of multiple books, including The Wisest One in the Room, co-authored with Lee Ross.

In this episode, Tom discusses his recent work on how people judge groups differently than individuals. For example, people want individuals to have longer streaks of success than groups. Or people are more tolerant of inequality when discussing a society of unequal individuals than a society of unequal groups. Finally, Tom talks about what he has learned, and how he has changed as a person, in collaborating with the late Lee Ross.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Paper on success

Paper on inequality

Book with Lee Ross

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Kate chats with Claudia Haase, Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Claudia’s research examines pathways towards happy and healthy development across the life span with a particular focus on emotions and emotion regulation. In this episode, Claudia shares insights from her work on romantic couples and how they navigate the emotional ups and downs of close relationships. Claudia also offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the methods her lab uses to study couples' interactions and outlines key directions for future research on interpersonal emotion regulation.

Check out recent publications from Claudia's Life-Span Development Lab: https://haaselab.sesp.northwestern.edu/publications/

Bella chats with Prof. Axel Cleeremans, professor of Cognitive Science and research director with the National Fund for Scientific Research at the Free University of Brussels. He directs the Center for Research in Cognition & Neuroscience and leads the Consciousness, Cognition and Computation Group. He is also the field chief editor at the Frontiers in Psychology journal, which by far has the most multi-disciplinary editorial board with more than 11,000 researchers from all over the world. He has given hundreds of talks and has been featured in many TV interviews and the extraordinary science documentary, The Most Unknown on Netflix.

In this episode, we discuss Axel's research on consciousness, the seminal philosophical debates on consciousness, and the current challenges and future direction of the field. Axel also shares his experience as a cast member on The Most Unknown. 

More about the Most Unknown here: https://www.themostunknown.com

We would love to hear what you think of this episode, or if you have any other suggestions for guests or topics for our podcast. You can reach us at stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com. You can also connect with us on Twitter @StanfordPsyPod. Finally, if you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast or elsewhere so more people can find us. Thank you so much!

Kate chats with Kateri McRae, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Denver and the director of the Automaticity, Affect, Control & Thought Lab. Kateri's work focuses on  emotion, cognition, and the interplay between them. In this episode, Kateri shares insights from her recently published quantitative case study of specific phobia for clothing buttons. Kateri also discusses the broader implications of her work for research on the different ways in which emotions can be generated: relatively automatic responses compared to the more "slow-burning" mental processes. 

Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1077722920300857

Bella chats with Prof. Dave Lagnado, a professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences in the Department of Experimental Psychology at UCL. Dave's research focuses on how people use causal models to draw inferences and make decisions. He has written over 100 articles and co-authored a textbook on the psychology of decision making. He has worked with US intelligence, the UK government and various legal and financial institutions, looking at methods to improve reasoning and decision making.

In this episode, Dave discusses his new book on the human capacity for causal reasoning and the challenges we face in evaluating evidence using criminal cases. Bella and Dave talk about how Bayesian Inference and Pearl's hierarchy are applied in the legal domain as well as the pros and cons of using causal models in decision making. Dave also shares his views on how causal models could potentially improve the performance of Artificial Intelligence systems.

Dave's Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/experimental-psychology/person/david-lagnado/

Book Explaining the Evidence - How the Mind Investigates the World https://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Evidence-Mind-Investigates-World/dp/0521184819