CogNation

Latest Episodes:

Episode 48: Psychedelic Science 2023 Jul 18, 2023

Show notes

In this episode, CogNation goes to the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver to get in on all the excitement. We present four interviews from the conference that represent a range of ideas about the resurgent interest in psychedelics as therapeutics.

Bekely Waves
The East Institute
Balasz Szigeti
Manoj Doss

Episode 47: Street Epistemology with Mark Solomon Jun 13, 2023

Show notes

Everyone has a set of beliefs. Increasingly, it seems like we wonder how so many people can hold opposite or contradictory beliefs -- puzzling if we think there's an objective reality. We have a great conversation with Mark Solomon, a clinical psychologist and the host of the Being Reasonable podcast, about Street Epistemology, a conversational method of probing why we believe what we believe.

https://www.beingreasonableshow.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@BeingReasonable

Special Guest: Mark Solomon.

Episode 46: Manesh Girn: Psychedelics and Brain Networks May 01, 2023

Show notes

Manesh Girn talks to us about the effects of psychedelics on the brain, based on his recent paper, "A complex systems perspective on psychedelic brain action". We discuss the current state of psychedelics as therapeutics, and how information theory can model changes in brain states that result from taking psychedelics.

Special Guest: Manesh Girn.

Episode 45: Blame and Political Attitudes: Gail Sahar Apr 12, 2023

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We talk with Professor Gail Sahar about her new book, entitled "Blame and Political Attitudes: The Psychology of America's Culture War", where she applies social psychology to understand where and why we assign blame in the political sphere.

https://www.amazon.com/Blame-Political-Attitudes-Psychology-Americas/dp/303120235X

Episode 44: Daniel Sternberg: The State of Artificial Intelligence Feb 15, 2023

Show notes

We talk to Dr. Daniel Sternberg, head of data at Notion Labs, about how to understand new developments in AI (artificial intelligence) like DALL-E-2 and chatgpt. Topics include the possibility for general intelligence in AI, similarities between human cognition and generative AI models, and the potential for sentient AI.

Episode 43: Stephanie Preston: Our Attachment to Stuff Dec 20, 2022

Show notes

Stephanie Preston (University of Michigan) returns to the show to talk about her latest research. Why do we hoard stuff? And how can we get people to care about the consequences of all that stuff on the environment? Her research has taken her from the strategies that some rats use to hide seeds (some hide in lots of small caches, while others hoard in a single location), to the cognitive/neural/emotional mechanisms of human beings with hoarding disorder. People tend to have emotional attachments to the stuff they own, and although most of us have more stuff than we need, for those with hoarding disorder it can be overwhelming.

In other recent research, Stephanie and her colleagues found individual differences in how connected people felt to the environment -- impassive people were less likely to be concerned about the destructive effects on the environment, and that politically conservative people tended to be more impassive.

Paper discussed:

Bickel, L. A., & Preston, S. D. (2022). Environmental impassivity: Blunted emotionality undermines concern for the environment. Emotion. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001072

Special Guest: Stephanie Preston.

Episode 42: The Science of Sleep with Dr. Aric Prather Nov 28, 2022

Show notes

Joe and Rolf talk to Dr. Aric Prather, a clinical psychiatrist at UCSF and author of the new book "The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest" about why sleep is important, the relationship of stress to sleep, and how to tune your body and environment to get a great night's sleep.

Special Guest: Aric Prather.

Episode 41: The Marshmallow Test Sep 21, 2022

Show notes

Is self-control at age 4 a predictor of lifelong success? Rolf & Joe look at new studies that replicate and extend Mischel's marshmallow experiments, discussing why some kids can wait longer for a bigger treat and what the test itself means.

Links:

Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159–1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661

The Atlantic: Why Rich Kids are so Good at the Marshmallow Test

Episode 40: Embodied Cognition Jul 23, 2022

Show notes

Our guests, Dr. Sheila Macrine and Dr. Jennifer Fugate, discuss the concept of "embodied cognition" and its implications for the classroom. They argue that traditional cognitive psychology has ignored the fact that the brain is situated in the body, and that learning happens most effectively if it is connected with our body and our environment, rather than learned abstractly.

Episode 39: Matthew Gingo: Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them Feb 13, 2022

Show notes

Developmental psychologist Matthew Gingo joins to discuss his research on morality and deception. Why and under what circumstances do parents and their children lie to one another?

We discuss his paper entitled "What they don't know won't hurt them: Parents' judgments about lying to their adolescents", published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence (2019)

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