Stanford Psychology Podcast - Stanford Psychology

148 - Dorsa Amir: How Culture Shapes Cognition Feb 27, 2025

Anjie chats with Dr. Dorsa Amir, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. She directs the Mind and Culture Lab, where she studies how culture shapes the developing mind. In this episode, Dorsa shares her papers that probe the many ways cultural environments can influence cognitive processes. She outlines a new framework proposing four possible “pathways” by which culture might (or might not) shape cognition. She also shares her own path into cultural psychology, blending anthropology and cognitive science to tackle age-old questions about the human mind.
Dorsa’s website: https://www.dorsaamir.com/
Dorsa’s lab website: https://www.mindandculturelab.com/
Dorsa’s twitter: @DorsaAmir
Dorsa’s paper: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/y7mtf_v1
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

147 - Geoff Hinton & Jay McClelland: Two AI Pioneers in Conversation Feb 13, 2025

Eric chats with 2024 Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Stanford Professor Jay McClelland, two pioneers who have spent nearly half a century laying the groundwork for modern-day AI, advancing research on neural networks long before it captured the world's imagination.

In fact, their early work faced significant skepticism from the scientific community - an experience they candidly discuss in this episode. This wide-ranging conversation covers everything from the capabilities of recent breakthrough LLMS like DeepSeek to AI agents, the nature of memory and confabulation, the challenges to aligning AI with human values when we humans don’t even agree on our values, and Geoff's fascinating new theory of language, featuring an analogy of words as thousand-dimensional, shape-shifting Lego blocks with hands.

Geoff, who retired in 2023, divided his time between the University of Toronto and Google DeepMind. With numerous accolades including the 2018 Turing Award and 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, he is perhaps best known for co-developing the backpropagation algorithm - now a cornerstone of AI research. Jay, currently at Stanford and Google DeepMind, has revolutionized our understanding of human learning through his work on Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP), applying neural network principles to understand phenomena like language acquisition. His insights into human learning have profoundly influenced how we understand machine learning.

Their friendship dates back to the late 1970s and grew stronger as both collaborated with fellow pioneer David Rumelhart. They share some touching memories about Dave in this episode. Remarkably, despite decades of friendship and building upon each other's work, this appears to be their first recorded conversation together. Eric challenged them to discuss their latest insights and disagreements.

This episode was recorded on January 29, 2025.

JOIN OUR 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:

Geoff's website

Geoff's Google Scholar

Jay's website

Jay's Google Scholar

Eric's website

Eric's X @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast X @StanfordPsyPod

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

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

146 - Alex Shaw: The Price of Neutrality Jan 30, 2025

This week, Misha chats with Dr. Alex Shaw, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago's Department of Psychology. His research explores how children and adults navigate the complex world of social behavior, with a particular focus on morality, fairness, and social judgments.

In this episode, Dr. Shaw discusses his fascinating research on why attempts to stay neutral in moral and political disagreements can sometimes backfire. His work reveals that when people choose not to take sides on contentious issues, they may actually be viewed as less trustworthy than those who openly disagree. Through a series of experiments, Dr. Shaw and his colleagues found that this distrust stems from observers perceiving neutrality as strategic deception. The conversation also covers broader insights about human social behavior and includes advice for PhD applicants.

Alex's paper
Alex's faculty page
Lab website

Misha's website

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

145 - Marginalia Episode: Erica Bailey on Authenticity Jan 16, 2025

Marginalia Episode is a collaboration between the Stanford Psychology Podcast and Marginalia Science. Marginalia Science is a community committed to promoting work of scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in academia. Their mission really resonated with our values at the Stanford Psychology Podcast.

In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this episode, Enna chats with Professor Erica Bailey at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Erica broadly studies the construct of authenticity, asking questions like, how do we know who we are? When do we feel the most like ourselves? Why do we often fail, despite our best efforts, to share our inner world with others? In this episode, we discuss her recent paper on how self-perceptions influence subjective authenticity. To learn more about Erica, you can read the Marginalia Science Newsletter below.

Episode on Marginalia Science: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7927b876/104-special-episode-marginalia-science

Marginalia Newsletter featuring Erica: https://substack.com/home/post/p-153969383

Erica’s Paper: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/9tc27

Erica’s Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ericarbailey

Erica’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-bailey-ph-d-22038172/

Erica’s Twitter: @ericarbailey

Enna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/

Enna’s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

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

Podcast Contact: stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

144 - Sandra Matz: AI, Social Media, And Data Privacy Jan 09, 2025

Eric chats with Sandra Matz, Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Sandra is a renowned computational social scientist, using AI and big data to study human behavior and preferences. Sandra was named as one of the Poets & Quants 40 under 40 Business School Professors in 2021.

In this episode, Eric and Sandra discuss Sandra’s new book “Mindmasters” on how companies and academics are using AI to predict and shape people’s personalities. They discuss how to align AI with human preferences, how social media is harnessing our attention, how to protect our privacy as AI is becoming more and more powerful, and whether to use or avoid AI friends and therapists.

JOIN OUR 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:

Sandra’s new book Mindmasters
Sandra’s website
Sandra’s Google Scholar
Eric's website
Eric's X @EricNeumannPsy
Podcast X @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

143 - Casey Kenyon Brown: Can Your Relationships Make You Depressed? Dec 05, 2024

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Casey Kenyon Brown, Professor at Georgetown University in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the prestigious Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Aging and the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science.

Casey’s research examines how we share, understand, and influence one another’s emotions. She’s interested in how these interpersonal emotional processes are beneficial for healthy aging, and how these processes may go awry and contribute to depression.

In this episode, Casey shares her journey in psychology, talks about her research on emotion and relationships, and provides advice on how we can build strong connections with people we love.

Please join our substack (https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/) to stay connected with our community of listeners from all over the world! If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating. It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners to share our love for psychology.

Casey’s Lab Website: https://careslab.facultysite.georgetown.edu/

Casey’s Lab Twitter: @CARESlab_GU

Casey’s paper on empathy and shared depression: https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026221141852

Enna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/

Enna’s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Contact: stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

142 - Meet the Hosts: Kate Petrova Nov 21, 2024

Adani chats with Kate Petrova, one of the first hosts of the Stanford Psychology Podcast and a fourth-year Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University. In this special episode from our Meet the Host series, Kate shares her journey into research and science communication, and how she grappled with the ups and downs of graduate school! She also discusses the value and challenges of interdisciplinarity, what affective science is and could look like in the future, and what most excites her about that picture!
If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.
Kate’s website: https://www.kpetrova.com/home
Kate’s twitter: @kate_ptrv
Kate’s paper on The Future of Emotion Regulation Research: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00222-0
Kate’s first episode with her advisor, Dr. James Gross: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pSGtdQmywj2ubmFAeaDL5?si=1ZFsw45OQGKvWClAG6VYQg
Adani’s website: https://www.adaniabutto.com
Adani’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adani.bsky.social
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack Stanford Psychology Podcast
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

141 - Michael Schwalbe and Geoff Cohen: When Politics Trumps Truths Nov 07, 2024

Anjie chats with Dr. Michael Schwalbe and Dr. Geoff Cohen. Michael is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, from which he also received his PhD in social psychology. Geoff is a Professor of Psychology and the James G. March Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business at Stanford University. His research examines the processes that shape people’s sense of belonging and self-concept, and the role that these processes play in various social problems. In this episode, Michael and Geoff shared their most recent work on biases we have when consuming political news: people were more likely to believe and share news aligned with their political beliefs, compared to news that was true, even when the headlines were outlandishly fake. They also talked about the implications of these biases for democracy, misinformation, and how we might counteract our own tendencies to favor agreeable but untrue information.

Michael & Geoff’s paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-33892-004.html

Stanford Report's coverage on the paper: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/10/new-study-shows-that-partisanship-trumps-truth
Michael’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelschwalbe/

Geoff’s lab website: http://cohenlab.stanford.edu

Geoff’s personal website: https://www.geoffreylcohen.com/bio

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

140 - Julia Chatain: Embodied Learning and Educational Technology in Mathematics and Beyond Oct 24, 2024

Adani chats with Dr. Julia Chatain, Senior Scientist at the Singapore-ETH Centre of ETH Zürich. Julia is a computer scientist and learning scientist responsible for building a new research program, “Future Embodied Learning Technologies” (FELT), focusing on exploring AI-powered embodied learning interventions to support low-progress learners and learners with special needs, both at the cognitive and the affective levels. Before that, she led the EduTech group at ETH Zürich, conducting Research and Development of educational technology through co-design with lecturers and students, with a focus on XR, AI-supported learning, and accessibility.
In this episode, Adani and Julia discuss Julia’s recent work on embodied learning in mathematics, much of which was part of her doctoral research at ETH Zürich conducted with her advisors Prof. Manu Kapur and Prof. Robert Sumner. They also dive into her journey that led her to where she is now, and discuss what she is currently working on at the Singapore-ETH Centre and beyond!
If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.
Julia’s website: https://juliachatain.com/
Julia’s paper on Grounding Graph Theory in Embodied Concreteness with VR: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000583039
Singapore-ETH Centre’s website: https://sec.ethz.ch/
Julia’s Twitter @JuliaChatain
Adani’s website: https://www.adaniabutto.com/
Adani’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adani.bsky.social
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

139 - Susan Carey: Becoming a Cognitive Scientist Oct 10, 2024

Anjie chats with Dr. Susan Carey. Susan is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and one of the most influential figures in the field of developmental psychology. Her groundbreaking research focuses on conceptual change and how knowledge systems develop throughout childhood. Susan has received numerous prestigious awards, including the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the David Rumelhart Prize for significant contributions to human cognition, and the Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences from the National Academy of Sciences. In this episode, Susan reflects on her journey into cognitive science, discusses the evolution of her research on children's conceptual understanding, and shares valuable advice for aspiring graduate students and young faculty.

Susan’s memoir: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-040622-091723

Susan’s personal website: https://www.harvardlds.org/our-labs/carey-lab/susan-carey/

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

138 - Hal Hershfield: Connecting with Your Future Self for a Better Tomorrow Sep 26, 2024

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Hal Hershfield, Professor of Marketing, Behavioral Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA Anderson School of Management. In 2017, Hal was recognized as a 40 under 40 best business school professor. This year, he was voted as faculty of the year by MBA students at UCLA.

Hal studies how thinking about time transforms the emotions and alters the judgments and decisions people make. His research concentrates on the psychology of long-term decision making and how time affects people’s lives — specifically at a moment when Americans are living longer and saving less.

Hal earned his PhD at Stanford Psychology under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Carstensen, who is Enna’s PhD advisor currently. In this episode, Hal shares his journey in psychology, talks about his research on time and decision making as well as his recent book, Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, an insightful and entertaining guide to grow into our ideal selves.

Please join our substack (https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/) to stay connected with our community of listeners from all over the world! If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating. It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners to share our love for psychology.

Hal’s website: https://www.halhershfield.com/

Hal’s book: https://www.halhershfield.com/yourfutureself

Hal’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hal-hershfield/

Hal’s Twitter: @HalHershfield

Enna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/

Enna’s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Contact: stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

137 - Kelsey Lucca: Unpacking the Development of Exploration and Exploitation Jul 25, 2024

Anjie chats with Dr. Kelsey Lucca. Kelsey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She directs the Emerging Minds Lab, where she leads her team to investigate cognitive development during infancy and early childhood, with a focus on the development of curiosity, social cognition, communication, and problem solving. In this episode, Kelsey chats about one of her recent papers “Developmental differences in children and adults’ enforcement of explore versus exploit search strategies in the United States and Turkey”. She also shares her personal journey into developmental science.

Kelsey’s lab website: https://www.emergingmindslab.org/

Kelsey’s Lab twitter: @EmergingMindsAZ

Kelsey’s paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.13520

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

136 - Meet the Hosts: Bella Fascendini Jul 11, 2024

Anjie chats with Bella Fascendini, a long time host of the Stanford Psychology Podcast and an incoming Ph.D. student in psychology at Princeton University. In this special episode from our Meet the Host series, Bella shares her journey into cognitive science and science communication, offering valuable tips for those considering graduate school or pursuing science communication. She also discusses one of her coolest work experiences —working with Penguin—and how it has shaped her current path.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Bella’s website: https://www.bellaxfascendini.com/

Bella’s twitter: @BellaFascendini

Bella’s first episode: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/4cea0f37/27-david-lagnado-how-causal-reasoning-can-help-us-make-better-judgments-and-solve-criminal-cases

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

135 - Jake Quilty-Dunn: The Language of Thought Hypothesis in Cognitive Science Jun 27, 2024

Joseph chats with Prof. Jake Quilty-Dunn, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Cognitive Science Rutgers University. Prof. Quilty-Dunn works primarily in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Much of his research concerns distinctions between kinds of mental representations (such as iconic and discursive formats), mental processes (such as inference and association), and mental systems (such as perception and cognition). He also has broad research interests in philosophy of language, aesthetics and early modern philosophy.

In this episode Joseph and Dr. Quilty-Dunn chat about the language of thought (LoT) hypothesis. They discuss the history of the idea, how the LoT differs from natural language, how it shows up in perception and cognition, how it compares to rival formats, and the extent to which it is learnable in development.

References:

Quilty-Dunn, J., Porot, N., & Mandelbaum, E. (2023). The best game in town: The reemergence of the language-of-thought hypothesis across the cognitive sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e261

134 - Lisa Damour: Inside Out 2 and the Science Of Teenage Emotions Jun 14, 2024

Joseph and Dr. Lisa Damour discuss the portrayal of teenage emotions in Pixar's "Inside Out 2", with a focus on anxiety. Dr. Damour, who consulted for the film as a clinical psychologist, shares her experience, the teenage emotions explored in the film, how scientific insights are integrated into the story, and the societal issues it addresses.

Dr Damour is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Untangled, Under Pressure, and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, which have been translated into twenty-three languages. She co-hosts the Ask Lisa podcast, works in collaboration with UNICEF, and is recognized as a thought leader by the American Psychological Association. Dr. Damour is a regular contributor to The New York Times and CBS News and the creator of Untangling 10to20, a digital library of premium content to support teens and those who care for them.

Dr. Damour serves as a Senior Advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University and has written numerous academic papers, chapters, and books related to education and child development. She maintains a clinical practice and also speaks to schools, professional organizations, and corporate groups around the world on the topics of child and adolescent development, family mental health, and adult well-being.

133 - Nicholas Shea: Concepts in Humans, Animals and Machines Jun 06, 2024

Joseph chats with Prof. Nicholas Shea, Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London and associate member of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. Prof. Shea is an interdisciplinary philosopher of mind and cognitive science, and has published work on mental representation, inheritance systems, consciousness, AI, and the metaphysics of mind. In this episode Joseph and Prof. Shea chat about two ways of thinking about concepts in human adults, babies, non-human animals, and artificial neural networks.
References:
Shea, N. (2023). Concepts as plug & play devices. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1870), 20210353.
Shea, N. (2023). Moving beyond content‐specific computation in artificial neural networks. Mind & Language, 38(1), 156-177.
Shea, N. (2018). Representation in cognitive science. Oxford University Press.
Shea, N. (2015). Distinguishing top-down from bottom-up effects. Perception and its modalities, 73-91.

132 - Nilam Ram: Learning from The Human Screenome Project May 23, 2024

Anjie chats with Dr. Nilam Ram. Nilam is a Professor of Communications & Psychology at Stanford University, and he studies how short-term changes develop across the life span and how longitudinal study designs contribute to the generation of new knowledge. Nilam is developing a variety of study paradigms that use recent developments in data science and the intensive data streams arriving from social media, mobile sensors, and smartphones to study behavioral change at multiple time scales. In this episode, we take a look at one of the paradigms that he has been working on: the Human Screenome Project, an ambitious project that has participants’ phone screens captured every five seconds for over a year as a way to record their specific ways of interacting with phones. Nilam shares how his thinking around generalizability has evolved over the course of the project.
Nilam’s paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00273171.2023.2229305

Nilam’s lab website: https://thechangelab.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

131 - Johannes Eichstaedt: Is Social Media to Blame for Mental Illness? (REAIR) Apr 25, 2024

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

130 - Laura Gwilliams: The Needles that Unraveled the Brain’s Language and What We Can Learn from Them Apr 11, 2024

Anjie chats with Dr. Laura Gwilliams. Laura is an assistant professor at Stanford University, jointly appointed between Stanford Psychology, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Stanford Data Science. Her work is focused on understanding the neural representations and operations that give rise to speech comprehension in the human brain. In this episode, Laura introduces her recent paper titled” Large-scale single-neuron speech sound encoding across the depth of human cortex”. She shares the insights we can derive from a recently developed technique called Neuropixels, which is essentially a tiny needle that can be placed into the human brain and record from hundreds of neurons at the same time. She also shares her personal journey into this line of work.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Laura’s paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06839-2

Laura’s personal website:https://lauragwilliams.github.io/

Laura’s lab website:https://gwilliams.sites.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

129 - Paul van Lange: Trust, Cooperation, And Climate Change (REAIR) Mar 28, 2024

Eric chats with Paul van Lange, Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford. He is well known for his vast work on trust, cooperation, and morality, applying these themes to everything from Covid to climate change. He has published multiple handbooks and edited volumes on these topics.

In this chat, Eric and Paul talk about the psychological barriers that stop people from fighting climate change. What do trust and cynicism have to do with it? What are barriers to cooperation more generally? Why do selfish people often believe others are selfish too, but kind people don’t think everyone is kind? Might most strangers actually be nice, despite all the stranger danger we always hear about? Finally, Paul shares if all his work on trust and cooperation has changed how he looks at the world and compares research in psychology in Europe to the US.
JOIN OUR 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:

Paul's paper on climate change
Paul's website
Paul's Twitter @PaulvanLange
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

128 – Halie Olson: How our Brains Care About our Personal Interests Mar 14, 2024

In this episode, Adani chats with Dr. Halie Olson! Halie is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Her research explores how early life experiences and environments impact brain development, particularly in the context of language, and what this means for children’s outcomes.
Halie talks about the intriguing backstory and results of her recent pre-print paper titled “When the Brain Cares: Personal interests amplify engagement of language, self-reference, and reward regions in the brains of children with and without autism.” In particular, she discusses what it means to be really interested in something, and how our brains respond to language about things we’re personally interested in. Halie also shares how she first got involved in research, her favorite parts about science, what she is excited to work on next, and a fun book recommendation!
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.
Halie’s paper: https://doi.org/10.1101%2F2023.03.21.533695
Halie's website: halieolson.com

Adani’s website: adaniabutto.com
Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you thought of this episode or the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

127 - Guilherme Lichand: Remote Learning Repercussions Feb 29, 2024

Anjie chats with Dr. Guilherme Lichand. Guilherme is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, and a co-Director at the Stanford Lemann Center. His research interest explores the sources of education inequities in the global south, and in interventions with the potential to overturn them. In this episode, Guilherme talks about his recent paper titled “The Lasting Impacts of Remote Learning in the Absence of Remedial Policies: Evidence from Brazil”. He shares his insights on how remote learning could have negative, long-term impacts on the learning outcomes, especially in places without high quality access to the facilities required by remote learning. He also shares his thoughts on whether the same patterns could generalize to remote work – that is, does work from home have negative impacts on our productivity.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Guilherme’s paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4209299

Guilherme’s personal website:https://lichand.info/

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

126 - Michele Gelfand: Culture and Conflict Feb 15, 2024

Eric chats with Michele Gelfand, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Michele’s culture lab studies the strength of cultural norms, negotiation, conflict, revenge, forgiveness, and diversity, drawing on many different disciplines. Michele is world-renowned for her work on how some cultures have stronger enforcement of norms (tight cultures), while others are more tolerant of deviations from the norm (loose cultures). She is the author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers.

In this chat, Eric and Michele discuss the latest insights into loose and tight cultures, what academic disciplines are tight versus loose, and how this framework explains phenomena as disconnected as Covid fears, the appeal of populist leaders, and why Ernie and Bert have so many disagreements. Michele then shares how she stays so passionate and productive, the barriers she has faced trying to be so interdisciplinary, how she deals with setbacks, and why she sometimes dresses up as a pickle.
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Links

Book: https://www.michelegelfand.com/rule-makers-rule-breakers

How tight or loose are you? https://www.michelegelfand.com/tl-quiz

Tight vs loose cultures: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1197754?casa_token=P4iNAMuyYeQAAAAA:gyWMq9sohJJ0LsH-bBRg844OqN8-e9AwiVb649lkXe8cXzCP5jcSmqtAojp-1Lfvg5itKyD2nPP8J4g

Culture, threat, tightness and looseness: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2113891119
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

125 - Marginalia Episode: Cristina Salvador on Cultural Psychology in Latin America Feb 01, 2024

Marginalia Episode is a collaboration between Stanford Psychology Podcast and Marginalia Science, a community committed to including, integrating, advocating for, and promoting members who are not typically promoted by the status quo in academia. In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this episode, Anjie chats with Dr. Cristina Salvador, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Cristina examines how culture interfaces with biology to influence our thinking, feeling, and behavior. She analyzes the influence of culture at multiple levels, including the brain, everyday language use, implicit measures, and big data. In this episode, we start our conversation on her recent paper titled “Emotionally expressive interdependence in Latin America: Triangulating through a comparison of three cultural zones.”. To learn more about Cristina, you can read the Marginalia Science Newsletter attached below.

Episode on Marginalia Science: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7927b876/104-special-episode-marginalia-science

Marginalia Newsletter featuring Cristina:https://marginaliascience.substack.com/p/newsletter-september-2023

Cristina’s paper; https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-15733-001.pdf

Cristina’s lab website:https://sites.duke.edu/culturelab/

Crstina’s twitter: @cris_esalvador

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

124 - Oriel FeldmanHall: Punishment, Forgiveness, and Predicting Emotions Jan 12, 2024

This week, Rachel chats with Oriel FeldmanHall, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistics, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Oriel's lab leverages methods from behavioral economics, social psychology, and neuroscience to explore the neural bases of social behavior, and the role of emotion in shaping social interactions. She has won numerous awards, including the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s Young Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to science, the Association for Psychological Science’s Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions, and the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology.

In this episode, Oriel provides an introduction to the world of affective science, explaining how her team measures and studies emotion. She describes how the emotions that we expect to feel—and the inaccuracies in our predictions—shape our judgments and behavior, and the complex relationship between emotion and depression. We also discuss the hazards of sharing scientific findings on twitter, and how some of the best research questions originate in coffee shops.
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Links:
Link to the paper we discussed
Check out more of Professor Oriel FeldmanHall's work at the FeldmanHall lab website!
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at stanfordpsychologypodcast@gmail.com

123 - Jacqueline Gottlieb: Are You Curious About Curiosity? Dec 07, 2023

This week, Julia chats with Jacqueline Gottlieb, Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Institute for Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Columbia University in New York. Since joining the Columbia Faculty in 2001, she has spearheaded pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of attention and curiosity, using computational modeling combined with behavioral and neurophysiological studies in humans and non-human primates.

In this episode, Professor Gottlieb unlocks the fundamental forces governing curiosity. She begins by explaining the ambiguity inherent in uncertainty and the balance between potential risks and rewards. Then, she reviews a recent study that suggests that we don’t always reason optimally about uncertainty. After discussing potential reasons why we might struggle with decision making surrounding uncertainty, she highlights key personality factors from the study that were associated with more successful decision making. Finally, she closes by sharing her hopes for the future of the field.

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

Links:

Link to the paper we discussed

Check out more of Professor Gottlieb’s work at her lab website!

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at stanfordpsychologypodcast@gmail.com

122 - Michal Kosinski: Studying Theory of Mind and Reasoning in LLMs. Nov 30, 2023

Xi Jia chats with Dr. Michal Kosinski, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Michal's research interests recently encompass both human and artificial cognition. Currently, his work centers on examining the psychological processes in Large Language Models (LLMs), and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data, and computational techniques to model and predict human behavior.
In this episode, they chat about Michal's recent works: "Theory of Mind Might Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models" and "Human-like intuitive behavior and reasoning biases emerged in large language models but disappeared in ChatGPT". Michal also shared his scientific journey and some personal suggestions for PhD students.
If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Michal's paper on Theory of Mind in LLMs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02083
Michal's paper on reasoning bias in LLMs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-023-00527-x
Michal's personal website: https://www.michalkosinski.com/

Xi Jia's profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/xijia-zhou

Xi Jia's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/LauraXijiaZhou

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

121 - Joshua Hartshorne: Does a Similar Native Tongue Speed Up English Learning for Kids? Nov 09, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College where he directs the Language Learning Laboratory. He studies language learning from a variety of aspects, including but not limited to: bootstrapping language acquisition, relationship between language and commonsense, as well as the critical periods in learning new languages. In this episode, they chat about Josh’s recent work on second language acquisition: “Will children learn English faster if their native language is similar to English?”. Josh also shares some insights on the best way to teach language to kids and adults.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Josh’s paper: https://l3atbc-public.s3.amazonaws.com/pub_pdfs/Yun%20et%20al%202023.pdf

Josh’s personal profile: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments/psychology/people/faculty-directory/joshua-hartshorne.html

Josh’s lab website: http://l3atbc.org/index.html

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

120 - Steve Fleming and Nadine Dijkstra: Distinguishing Imagination from Reality Oct 26, 2023

This week, Julia chats with two guests from University College London, Professor Steve Fleming and Dr. Nadine Dijkstra. Professor Fleming is the Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology and Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging where he leads the Metacognition Group. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the William James prize from the Association for Scientific Study of Consciousness. Dr. Dijkstra is a Senior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at University College London. She earned her PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the Donders Institute in 2019, after which she moved to London to pursue a postdoc at UCL with Professor Fleming.

In this episode, Dr. Dijkstra and Professor Fleming take us into the fascinating realm of how we distinguish, or at least attempt to distinguish, reality from imagination. They relate the details of a recent study, which indicates that our perceptions of reality might not be as different from our imaginations as we would like to believe. They suggest that this framework of perceptual reality monitoring could be a lens through which our brains interpret all of our experiences. In fact, this perceptual reality monitoring framework might provide an explanation of how we consciously experience the world. After discussing their recent experiment and relating it to the broader field of consciousness science, each of them shares details about their career journeys and their hopes for the future of the field.

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

Links:

Link to the paper we discussed

Check out more of Professor Fleming and Dr. Dijkstra’s work at the UCL Metacognition lab website!

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at stanfordpsychologypodcast@gmail.com

119 - Bryan Brown: Virtual Reality for Science Education Oct 19, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Bryan Brown. Bryan is a professor of teacher education at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research interest explores the relationship between student identity, discourse, classroom culture, and academic achievement in science education. In this episode, we chat about his recent work on adopting VR – Virtual Reality in the classroom. The title of the paper we discuss is Teaching culturally relevant science in virtual reality: “when a problem comes, you can solve it with science”. Bryan shares his insights on how VR could be a valuable tool to science education. He also talks about how he became interested in this topic.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Bryan’s paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1046560X.2020.1778248

Bryan’s personal profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/bryan-brown

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

118 - Josh Jackson: Morality, Culture, and Social Media Oct 12, 2023

Eric chats with Joshua Jackson, newly minted Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. In his research, Josh studies how culture co-evolves with psychology. He is interested in how culture has shaped the mind throughout human history, and how it continues to shape human futures. He regularly publishes in the field’s best journals with innovative methods and is by many considered a rising star in psychology.

In this chat, Eric and Josh discuss culture and morality. Why do some cultures have a crude view of another’s morality as either all good or all bad, when some cultures have a more nuanced view? Can we ever know how kind someone truly is? How does social media impact our sense of morality? Finally, Josh shares his exciting journey across the whole globe to find his identity as an academic and opens up about the hopes and anxieties he has over becoming a professor.

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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:

Josh's paper
Josh'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

117 - Sho Tsuji: A blueprint for modeling how babies acquire language Oct 05, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Sho Tsuji, an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo where she directs the IRCN baby lab. Her core research interests involve understanding how babies acquire language efficiently. In this episode, we chat about her recent work on approaching this question from a computational perspective, a paper titled “SCALa: A blueprint for computational models of language acquisition in social context”. Sho explained why a computational perspective is crucial for understanding language acquisition. She also shared her perspective on large language models as a human language acquisition researcher.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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.

Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027721001980?casa_token=qgQQnJZhAtsAAAAA:jpgo27gePFql_iSljm__ZAEcnT-3Qcemy5_QMVxL06DQO_ZJjHuGeBlFHmnnbUd-9UD5xNGK920

Sho’s personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/tsujish/home

Sho’s lab website: https://babylab.ircn.jp/en/

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

116 - George Mashour: How Psychedelics Can Shed Light on Consciousness Sep 28, 2023

This week, Julia chats with George Mashour, the Robert B. Sweet Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. Professor Mashour was the founding director of the University of Michigan Center for Consciousness Science and the Michigan Psychedelic Center.

In this episode, Julia and Professor Mashour discuss the reinvigorated study of psychedelics and the light it may shed on different dimensions of consciousness. Professor Mashour weighs in on the ongoing normative debate about how psychedelic drugs should be defined. Should they be defined on a molecular level by their mechanism of action in the brain or based upon the subjective experience they produce in the user?

He relates the results of an exciting recent study that uses psychedelic drugs as a tool to alter normal states of consciousness. This enables him to compare brain network dynamics in these altered states of consciousness with those dynamics in normal states of consciousness and with those in lowered states of consciousness induced by anesthesia. In some ways, this technique allows us to peer into the brain to find out what brain activity is associated with particular experiences. Professor Mashour also offers his perspective on two of the most prominent theories of consciousness and a groundbreaking ongoing adversarial collaboration evaluating them.

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

Links:

Professor Mashour’s paper

Professor Mashour’s website

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at stanfordpsychologypodcast@gmail.com

115 - Matt Abrahams: Think Faster, Talk Smarter Sep 21, 2023

Eric chats with Matt Abrahams, leading expert in the field of communication and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Matt is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and communications consultant. He has helped numerous presenters prepare for high-stakes talks, including Nobel Prize award presentations, and appearances at TED and the World Economic Forum. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award-winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast.

In this chat, Eric and Matt discuss all things public speaking and stage fright, introducing Matt’s upcoming book Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot which provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously.
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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:

Matt's upcoming NEW BOOK
Matt's LinkedIn
Matt'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

114 REAIR SUMMER - Gillian Sandstrom: Talking to Strangers Sep 14, 2023

Welcome to Week 8 aka the LAST WEEK of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
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.

113 REAIR SUMMER - Jon Jachimowicz: Should You Follow Your Passion? Sep 07, 2023

Welcome to Week 7 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
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

112 REAIR SUMMER - Dacher Keltner: The Science of Awe Aug 31, 2023

Welcome to Week 6 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
Eric chats with Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and Co-Director of the Greater Good Science Center. Dacher has worked on many topics such as compassion, power, and social class. He has introduced hundreds of thousands of people to “The Science of Happiness” through his online course and podcast with the same name. He has written multiple best-selling books, most recently on awe.

In this chat, Eric asks Dacher about all things awe, from traveling to psychedelics to Beyonce. Does everyone feel awe? Should everyone feel it? What is the most common form of awe? How can awe help people through grief? What does it have to do with ASMR? Does awe make people naïve? Finally, Dacher shares what it was like to work on movies such as Inside Out and adds some kind words about his former advisor and psychology legend, the late Lee Ross.
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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:

Dacher's new book on awe
Dacher'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

111 REAIR SUMMER - Jay Van Bavel: The Power of Us Aug 24, 2023

Welcome to Week 5 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
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!

110 REAIR SUMMER - James Gross: Building Emotion Regulation Skills During the Pandemic and Beyond Aug 17, 2023

Welcome to Week 4 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
Kate chats with James Gross, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Lab. His work focuses on emotions: What they are, how they unfold over time, and how people regulate them in different contexts. In this episode, James shares insights from a recent study examining the effects of brief emotion regulation interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic across 87 countries. James also discusses the broader implications of his work and talks about how people can learn to work with their emotions instead of fighting against them.

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01173-x
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.

109 REAIR SUMMER - Juliana Schroeder: Mistakenly Seeking Solitude Aug 10, 2023

Welcome to Week 3 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
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.
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:

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

108 REAIR SUMMER - Abigail Marsh: Surprising Predictors of Everyday Kindness Aug 03, 2023

Welcome to Week 2 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
Eric chats with Abigail Marsh, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Georgetown. Her work has focused on phenomena as diverse as empathy, altruism, aggression, and psychopathy. In 2017, Abby published her book, The Fear Factor, describing her fascinating research with extreme altruists on the one hand and individuals with psychopathy on the other. She is the former President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society.
In this episode, Abby challenges the common assumption that individualism means selfishness. Instead, she has found that individualism predicts more kindness, just like being healthy and wealthy predicts being kinder to others. Eric and Abby discuss if our understanding of individualism is wrong, if kindness might look different in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures, and if people are too cynical these days.
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:
Abby's paper
Abby's book The Fear Factor
Abby's Twitter @aa_marsh

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

107 REAIR SUMMER - Josh Greene: Cooperation, Charity, and Effective Giving Jul 27, 2023

Welcome to Week 1 of our REAIR SUMMER! From this week till September 21st, we will be revisiting some of our favorite episodes around topics related to personal development and self-improvement!
This week, we revisit the conversation between Eric and Josh Greene, Professor of Psychology at Harvard. Josh is a leading researcher of moral judgment and is the author of Moral Tribes. Several graduating classes have named him their favorite professor at Harvard!

In this chat, Eric asks Josh how he has raised over 2 million $ for charity through Giving Multiplier. Listeners are invited to give to both their favorite and some of the most effective charities - and have their donation matched at a higher rate than usual at this link! Josh also shares how he is trying to fight polarization with games, how to do the most good as a researcher, why cooperation is the story of life, what his next book is about, the future of moral psychology, and how his thinking has changed since he first started thinking about moral philosophy in high school.
JOIN OUR 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:

Do good by donating through Giving Multiplier (with higher matching rate!)
Paper showing why Giving Multiplier works
Josh’s book Moral Tribes
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

106 - Amit Goldenberg: Collective Emotions and Social Media Jul 20, 2023

Eric chats with Amit Goldenberg, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Amit studies emotions in social interactions, for example in political contexts and on social media. He was a journalist and author before becoming an academic.

In this episode, Eric and Amit talk about how emotions operate in groups. Do crowds easily go “mad”? What emotions spread faster in groups? Why are we drawn to people more politically extreme than us? How is social media shaping our emotions and political behavior? Finally, Amit shares his journey from being a journalist to being a psychologist at a business school.

JOIN OUR 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:

Amit's paper on collective emotions
Amit's paper on why we are attracted to morally extreme individuals
Amit'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

105 - Meet the Hosts: Eric Neumann on Podcasting and Studying Trust Jul 13, 2023

Jo chats with one of the co-hosts of the podcast, Eric Neumann.

Eric is a rising fourth year PhD student at Stanford, working with Jamil Zaki on trust and cynicism. He co-founded this podcast with Anjie in early 2020 during their first year of grad school.

In this episode, Jo and Eric casually chat about overcoming social anxieties during podcasting and grad school, how Eric's research on trust is inspired by his own trust issues, and why Jo and Eric might actually be an artificial intelligence.
If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Website: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/

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

Eric’s website: https://ericneumann96.wixsite.com/mysite

Eric’s twitter: @EricNeumannPsy
Joseph’s website: https://josephouta.com/

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

104 - Special Episode: Marginalia Science Jul 06, 2023

In this special episode, Anjie chats with Jordan Wylie and Eliana Hadjiandreou, who make up ½ of the incoming leadership of Marginalia Science. Marginalia science is a place to promote and learn about the work of social scientists who are women, gender non-conforming, BIPOC, LGBTQI, disabled, and/or in any other way not promoted by the status quo in academia. They send out monthly newsletters on their Substack highlighting the awesome work of their community, and they also hold events to create space for community members to gather.

Links:

Subscribe to Marginalia Science’s newsletter via Substack!

Marginalia science website: https://www.marginaliascience.com/

Marginalia science’s twitter: @marginalia_sci

Check out Marginalia Science’s 2019 academic paper in Nature Human Behavior here

Get in touch with Marginalia science: marginaliascience@gmail.com
Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

103 - Neil Lewis, Jr.: What Counts As Good Science? Jun 29, 2023

Joseph chats with Neil Lewis, Jr., Assistant Professor of Communication and Social Behavior at Cornell University, and Assistant Professor of Communication Research in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Neil also co-directs Cornell’s Action Research Collaborative, an institutional hub that brings together researchers, practitioners, community members, and policymakers to collaborate on projects and initiatives to address pressing equity issues in society.

Neil’s research examines how people’s social contexts and identities influence how they make sense of the world around them, and the implications of those meaning-making processes for their motivation to pursue a variety of goals in life.

In this episode Neil and I chat about his recent publication “What Counts as Good Science? How the Battle for Methodological Legitimacy Affects Public Psychology”. We explore the history behind the different methods used in basic and applied science, how the methods influence perceptions of legitimacy, and what lessons we can draw to address the current crisis of confidence in psychology.
Links:

Lewis Jr, N. A. (2021). What counts as good science? How the battle for methodological legitimacy affects public psychology. American Psychologist, 76(8), 1323. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000870

Neil's website https://neillewisjr.com/

Joseph’s Twitter @outa_joseph

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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

102 - Meet the Hosts: Joseph Outa's Journey Into Science Communication Jun 23, 2023

Eric chats with one of the co-hosts of the podcast, Joseph Outa.

Joseph is an incoming graduate student at Johns Hopkins where he will work with Dr. Shari Liu at the Liu Lab. He was previously a research coordinator in the psychology department at Stanford University.

In this episode, Eric and Jo have a casual chat about what Jo has been up to at Stanford and his plans going into graduate school. Jo also shares how he got into science communication and about life as an international student.

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.

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Website: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/

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

Joseph’s website: https://josephouta.com/

Joseph’s twitter: @outa_joseph

Eric’s website: https://ericneumann96.wixsite.com/mysite

Eric’s twitter: @EricNeumannPsy

101 - Natasha Chaku: 100 Days of Adolescence Jun 15, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Natasha Chaku. Natasha is an assistant professor at the Department of Psychological and Brain Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Her core research interests involve understanding cognitive development in adolescence, its correlates, and the implications of its development for different populations, especially as related to puberty, psychopathology, and positive development. In this episode, Anjie and Natasha chats about Natasha’s recent work titled “100 Days of Adolescence: Elucidating externalizing behaviors through the daily assessment of inhibitory control”. Natasha took us through a deep dive into the how and why of studying adolescent cognition. She also shares her journey in studying this period of life.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Natasha’s twitter: @Natasha_Chaku

Natasha’s faculty webpage: https://psych.indiana.edu/directory/faculty/chaku-natasha.html

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

100 - Paul Bloom: The Psychology of Everything Jun 08, 2023

Eric chats with Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of seven books, including his latest “Psych: The Story of the Human Mind.” Countless people around the world have been introduced to psychology through his online courses “Introduction to Psychology” and “Moralities of Everyday Life.”

In this chat, Eric and Paul discuss to what extent knowing about psychology actually helps us navigate everyday life with other people. Should psychology students still learn about Freud? Why would Paul never write a psychology textbook? Why is he writing a next book on perversity and something called “reactance?” How did he manage to become a successful professor while researching such a diverse range of topics? How to use Twitter without becoming a troll? Finally, Paul faces some surprisingly tough questions generated by ChatGPT.
JOIN OUR 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:

Paul's latest book Psych
Paul's online classes
Paul'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

99 - Deon Benton: What a Computational Model Can Tell Us About Babies' Inner (Moral) Life? (REAIR) Jun 01, 2023

In this episode, Anjie chats with Deon Benton, an assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. Deon directs the Computational Cognitive Development Lab, and he investigates causal learning in infants and children with a particular focus on those mechanisms and processes that support such learning. He uses both behavioral research and computational (connectionist) modeling to examine this topic. In this episode, he will share his recent research using a connectionist model to investigate infants’ understanding of morality.
You can read more about Deon's research on his lab's website: https://theccdlab.com/.
His podcast on developmental psychology: It's Innate
You can also follow him on Twitter @DeonTBenton

98 - Shinobu Kitayama: A Cultural Psychology for the Whole World May 25, 2023

Eric chats with Shinobu Kitayama, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on cultural differences and similarities in a variety of mental processes such as self, emotion and cognition.

In this chat, Eric and Shinobu chat about how previous work in cultural psychology was limited mostly to differences between Westerners and East Asians. Shinobu summarizes work showing potential differences among understudied groups such as people from the Arab zone, Latin America, and South Asia. Finally, Shinobu clarifies that Western independence is not the same as selfishness and shares his own adventurous journey into the field. What was it like arriving in the US and feeling like most psychology findings did not make sense with his Japanese background?

JOIN OUR 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:

Shinobu's paper
Shinobu'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

97 - Ovul Sezer: The Case for Sharing Good News (REAIR) May 18, 2023

This week, we revisit one of our favorite episodes! Eric chats with Ovul Sezer, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at UNC Kenan-Flagler. Ovul’s research focuses on impression mismanagement, or the mistakes we make as we try to impress others. Her research has been featured in outlets such as Time Magazine and Forbes Magazine.
In this episode, Ovul discusses her recent paper on Hiding Success: People are often reluctant to share good news with others, but Ovul’s research suggests that this can harm their relationships and create competitive cultures. Ovul and Eric then make a special “pact,” and encourage listeners to do the same.
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:
Ovul's paper
Ovul's Twitter @ovulsezer

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

96 - Jon Freeman: Reading Faces May 11, 2023

Eric chats with Jon Freeman, Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia. Jon’s lab studies how we perceive other people, such as how we categorize others into social groups and infer their emotion or personality via facial cues.

In this chat, Eric and Jon chat about how we rapidly make up our mind about another’s character in less than a second, and how such first impressions can be false and succumb to various biases. How do we perceive another’s personality and do people make the same inferences around the world? Do attractive faces seem more trustworthy? Finally, Jon talks about his recent efforts on behalf of the LGBTQ+ science community.
JOIN OUR 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:

Jon's paper
Jon's website
Jon's Twitter @freemanjb
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

95 - Meet the Hosts: Anjie Cao and Her Path to Science Communication May 04, 2023

Bella chats with one of the co-founders of the podcast, Anjie Cao.

Anjie is a 3rd-year graduate student in the psychology department at Stanford University, where she works with Dr. Mike Frank in the Stanford Language and Cognition Lab.

In this episode, Anjie and Bella have a casual chat and talk about how Anjie and Eric started the podcast about two years ago and how this journey has been for her. Anjie also shares some behind-the-scene stories, such as where the name of the podcast comes from. And what is it like to be a graduate student researcher?

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.

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Website: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/

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

Anjie’s website: https://anjiecao.github.io/

Anjie’s twitter: @anjie_cao

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/

Bella's Twitter: @BellaFascendini

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

94 - Josh Greene: Cooperation, Charity, and Effective Giving Apr 27, 2023

Eric chats with Josh Greene, Professor of Psychology at Harvard. Josh is a leading researcher of moral judgment and is the author of Moral Tribes. Several graduating classes have named him their favorite professor at Harvard!

In this chat, Eric asks Josh how he has raised over 2 million $ for charity through Giving Multiplier. Listeners are invited to give to both their favorite and some of the most effective charities - and have their donation matched at a higher rate than usual at this link! Josh also shares how he is trying to fight polarization with games, how to do the most good as a researcher, why cooperation is the story of life, what his next book is about, the future of moral psychology, and how his thinking has changed since he first started thinking about moral philosophy in high school.
JOIN OUR 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:

Do good by donating through Giving Multiplier (with higher matching rate!)
Paper showing why Giving Multiplier works
Josh’s book Moral Tribes
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

93 - Moshe Hoffman: Altruism, irrationality, and the psychology of aesthetics Apr 21, 2023

Rachel chats with Moshe Hoffman, a Lecturer and Independent Scholar at Harvard’s Department of Economics. Moshe uses game theory to explore the evolutionary bases of human behavior, from altruistic donations to our taste in music. His recent book, co-authored with Dr. Erez Yoeli, is “Hidden Games: The Surprising power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior.”
In this episode, Rachel and Moshe discuss how incentives shape empathy, how saying "I love you" enables social coordination, and why we appreciate the music of rapper MF Doom.
If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

"Hidden Games: The Surprising power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior"

"An Evolutionary Explanation for Ineffective Altruism" Bethany Burum, Martin Nowak, Moshe Hoffman (Appendix), Nature Human Behavior (2020)

Twitter: @Moshe_Hoffman

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/hoffmanmoshe/

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

92 - Paul van Lange: Trust, Cooperation, And Climate Change Apr 13, 2023

Eric chats with Paul van Lange, Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford. He is well known for his vast work on trust, cooperation, and morality, applying these themes to everything from Covid to climate change. He has published multiple handbooks and edited volumes on these topics.

In this chat, Eric and Paul talk about the psychological barriers that stop people from fighting climate change. What do trust and cynicism have to do with it? What are barriers to cooperation more generally? Why do selfish people often believe others are selfish too, but kind people don’t think everyone is kind? Might most strangers actually be nice, despite all the stranger danger we always hear about? Finally, Paul shares if all his work on trust and cooperation has changed how he looks at the world and compares research in psychology in Europe to the US.
JOIN OUR 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:

Paul's paper on climate change
Paul's website
Paul's Twitter @PaulvanLange
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

91 - Casey Lew-Williams: From Infant-directed Speech to Infant-directed Communication Apr 06, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr.Casey Lew-Williams. Casey is a Professor at Princeton University, where he also directs the Princeton Baby Lab. He studies how babies learn, with a particular focus on language and communication. In this episode, we chat about a recent preprint he co-authored with Dr. Jessica Kosie titled "Infant-Directed Communication: Examining the multimodal dynamics of infants’ everyday interactions with caregivers". Casey shares his thoughts on why it is important to study and how to study infant-directed communication.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Casey's paper: https://osf.io/hyqp2/

Casey’s lab website: http://babylab.princeton.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

90 - Elliot Aronson: Cognitive Dissonance, Cooperation, And Juicy Stories About the History of Psychology Mar 30, 2023

Eric chats with Elliot Aronson, Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz. Elliot is one of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century. He is known for his work on cognitive dissonance, where people do crazy things but not for crazy reasons, as he puts it, and the Jigsaw Classroom, intended to establish cooperation in competitive environments. He is the only person ever to receive all major awards from the American Psychological Association: for writing, research, and teaching.

In this chat, Eric and Elliot go into a deep dive into the history of psychology and Elliot’s role in it. What was it like working with the influential psychologists Abraham Maslow and Leon Festinger? Why did these two people dislike each other so much? How did racial segregation motivate Elliot’s research? How can research ever address big social problems? Why are the 2010s the “decade of dissonance”?
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:

Elliot's book on dissonance and self-justification
Elliot's book introducing social psychology
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

89 - Edouard Machery: What Is a Replication? (REAIR) Mar 23, 2023

This week, we revisit one of our favorite episodes from last year (with improved audio quality!). In this episode, Anjie chats with Edouard Machery, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. Edouard's main research focuses on the intersection between cognitive science and philosophy. In this episode, Edouard shares his recent work on a topic that is extremely important for psychology today: replication. In an era of the replication crisis, it is more important than ever to understand the concept of replication. What are we really talking about when we are talking about replication? Is preregistration the cure-all magic for the crisis? Why is scientific reform so difficult? These are the questions Edouard ponders. You can learn more about his research on his personal website.
Paper: Machery, E. (2020). What is a replication?. Philosophy of Science, 87(4), 545-567.

88 - Christina Barbieri: Do examples help students learn math? Mar 16, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Christina Barbieri. Christina is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware’s School of Education within the Educational Statistics and Research Methods Ph.D. program and the Learning Sciences specializations. Her work focuses on applying and evaluating the effectiveness of instructional strategies and materials based on principles of learning from cognitive and learning sciences on improving mathematical competencies. In this episode, they chat about her recent paper, A Meta-analysis of the Worked Examples Effect on Mathematics Performance. She talks about how worked examples could help students learn maths, and how sometimes they might fail.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Christina’s paper: https://tinyurl.com/BarbieriEtal

Christina’s twitter: @c_barbieri_d

Christina’s website: https://sites.udel.edu/barbieri/

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

87 - Marilynn Brewer: Social Identity and Intergroup Conflict Mar 09, 2023

Eric chats with Marilynn Brewer, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Ohio State University. Marilynn is one of the world’s leading scholars on social identity, intergroup relations, and social cognition. She has been president of various psychological associations and former Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA.

In this episode, Eric and Marilynn talk about why people care so much about belonging to a group. How do people balance belonging to a group and being a unique individual at the same time? Does love for the ingroup really always lead to hatred of the outgroup? How can we overcome intergroup conflict? Finally, Marilynn shares how she stumbled into psychology and what she loves about the field of social psychology.
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:

Marilynn's paper on ingroup love and outgroup hatred
Marilynn's paper on the social self
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

86 - Cameron Ellis: Using fMRI to study what it is like to be an infant Mar 02, 2023

Bella chats with professor Cameron Ellis.

Cameron is an assistant professor in the psychology department at Stanford University, where he leads the Scaffolding of Cognition Team. Cameron’s research focuses on understanding the infrastructure of human cognition and how it’s constructed during infancy. In other words, what is it like to be an infant? To study this, Cameron and his team use neuroscience and cognitive science methods such as fMRI.

In this episode, Cameron discussed his research in studying infants’ memory and attention, how he overcame the challenges when doing infant fMRI, and directions for his newly formed lab at Stanford. Later on, Cameron also shared personal stories about his background and journey in academia.
If you find this episode interesting, please subscribe to our Substack and 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:

Cameron’s lab: http://soc.stanford.edu/

Cameron’s Twitter: @CameronTEllis

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/

Bella's Twitter: @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

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

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

85 - Wayne Wu: Attention, from a philosophical point of view Feb 23, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Wayne Wu. Wanye is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He works on attention, perception, action, and schizophrenia at the interface between philosophy and cognitive science. In this episode, Wayne shares his recent work “On Attention and Norms: An Opinionated Review of Recent Work”. He also talks about attention in real life – for example, how do we thrive in a world where social media algorithms constantly fight for our attention? Finally, Wayne also shares a preview of his upcoming book Movements of the Mind, which explores topics related to mental actions.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Wayne’s paper: https://psyarxiv.com/83qva/

Wayne’s twitter: @attninaction

Wayne’s website:https://www.waynewu.net/

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

84 - Martha Nussbaum: Justice for Animals Feb 16, 2023

Eric chats with Martha Nussbaum, Distinguished Service Professor in law and philosophy at the University of Chicago. She is one of the most influential philosophers alive and has written about various topics such as Roman philosophy, existentialism, feminism, and emotions. She has won more awards than could be listed here, including the prestigious Berggruen Prize and Holberg Prize. Most recently, she is the author of “Justice for Animals.”

In this chat, Eric asks Martha about what it means to be just to animals. Should we be just to all animals equally? Why can people be so cruel to animals? What do wonder, anger, compassion, and hope have to with animal justice? Can people be too compassionate? Martha talks about Avatar’s role in promoting compassion for animals and gives recommendations for documentaries. Finally, she shares what a day in her life looks like and how she stays so productive.
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:

Martha's new book
Martha's faculty page
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

83 - Dacher Keltner: The Science of Awe Feb 09, 2023

Eric chats with Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and Co-Director of the Greater Good Science Center. Dacher has worked on many topics such as compassion, power, and social class. He has introduced hundreds of thousands of people to “The Science of Happiness” through his online course and podcast with the same name. He has written multiple best-selling books, most recently on awe.

In this chat, Eric asks Dacher about all things awe, from traveling to psychedelics to Beyonce. Does everyone feel awe? Should everyone feel it? What is the most common form of awe? How can awe help people through grief? What does it have to do with ASMR? Does awe make people naïve? Finally, Dacher shares what it was like to work on movies such as Inside Out and adds some kind words about his former advisor and psychology legend, the late Lee Ross.
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:

Dacher's new book on awe
Dacher'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

82 - Kimberly Chiew: How Do People Remember Election Night 2016? Feb 02, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Kimberly Chiew with us. Kimberly is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Denver. She directs the Motivation, Affect, & Cognition Lab. She is broadly interested in examining affective and motivational influences on goal-directed cognition. In this episode, Kimberly chats bout her paper “Remembering Election Night 2016: Subjective but Not Objective Metrics of Autobiographical Memory Vary with Political Affiliation, Affective Valence, and Surprise”. She also shares how she came up with the idea of this natural experiment, and how different factors such as emotion, or feelings of surprise may influence the way we remember things.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Kimberly’s paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-68985-001

Kimberly’s twitter: @kimberlychiew

Kimberly’s lab’s website: http://dumaclab.org/

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

81 - Sa-Kiera Hudson: Social Dominance, Empathy, and Schadenfreude Jan 26, 2023

Eric chats with Sa-Kiera Hudson, Assistant Professor at University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business. Kiera studies hierarchies: How hierarchies are formed, how they are maintained, and how they intersect.

In this episode, Eric and Kiera chat about her work on social dominance orientation. Why do some people feel justified to discriminate against minorities? Kiera explains that a desire for social dominance leads to less empathy and more schadenfreude towards minorities. Finally, Kiera shares what it was like working with the late Jim Sidanius, a legend in psychology, and how she stumbled into psychology research.
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:

Kiera's pre-print
Kiera's website
Kiera's Twitter @Sakiera_Hudson
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

80 - Hu Chuan-Peng: Building Open Science in China Jan 12, 2023

Anjie chats with Dr. Hu Chuan-Peng, a faculty member of the School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China. His research interests include self-cognition (i.e., how humans process self-related information) and mental health, his team uses three broad approaches: meta-science, modeling, and measurement. In addition, he is also one of the founding members of the Chinese Open Science Network, a grassroots network for promoting awareness of reproducibility and open science in China. In this episode, Chuan-Peng shared how the network was initiated, the events that a network run by volunteers can organize, and lessons learned through promoting open science in a developing country.
If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on 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:

Chuan-Peng’s paper: https://psyarxiv.com/ac9by/

Chuan-Peng’s twitter: @hcp4715

Chuan-Peng’s website: https://huchuanpeng.com/

Chinese Open Science Network’s website: https://open-sci.cn/

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

79 - Delroy Paulhus: Psychopathy, Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Sadism (WITH TRANSCRIPT) Jan 05, 2023

AN INTERACTIVE TRANSCRIPT IS AVAILABLE FOR THIS EPISODE: https://share.descript.com/view/PDj7Wi7M2oS or on OUR SUBSTACK
Eric chats with Delroy Paulhus, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. He famously co-created the term dark triad, describing everyday villains: psychopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellians. He and his collaborators have recently added a fourth factor: sadism.

In this episode, Eric and Delroy chat about how these dark personalities manifest in everyday life. How are they similar, and how are they different? How does Delroy study something like sadism in the lab? Where in society do these dark individuals flourish, and do they ever benefit society? Are they more intelligent? Do we have more psychopaths and narcissists among us now than in the past? Finally, Delroy shares if he is still able to see the good in people after studying dark personalities for so long.
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:

Interactive transcript
Delroy's review paper
Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack with FULL TRANSCRIPT https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

78 - Laura Schulz: The journey of becoming a cognitive scientist and what babies and children have taught us about their cognition Dec 29, 2022

Bella chats with professor Laura Schulz.

Laura is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT. She is also the director and principal investigator of the Early Childhood Cognition Lab. Laura’s research focuses on understanding the infrastructure of human cognition and how it’s constructed during early childhood. For example, Laura and her lab study children’s causal reasoning, social cognition, emotion understanding, and the connection between play and learning. Laura has also received numerous scientific awards, such as the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology and the National Academy of Sciences Troland Award.

In this episode, Laura shares personal stories about her journey in science and fascinating research projects that she and her students conducted with infants and children over the years. We also discussed the open science online platform for developmental research called Lookit, first developed by Kim Scott, who was one of Laura’s PhD students.

Laura also shared her vision for gearing the field towards a more open, accessible, and collaborative environment where data sharing is made possible among institutions across continents.

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:

Laura’s lab: https://eccl.mit.edu/

Lookit: https://lookit.mit.edu/

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/

Bella's Twitter: @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

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

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

77 - Melissa Kibbe: How do infants represent objects and agents? Dec 22, 2022

Bella chats with professor Melissa Kibbe.

Melissa is an associate professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Boston University, where she directs the Developing Minds lab. Her lab studies infants and children’s development of object, numerical, and future-oriented cognition. She is also a passionate advocate for promoting equity and justice in science and academia.

In this episode, we discussed Melissa’s research on how infants and children perceive, understand, and remember objects and agents. For example, what do babies remember about objects when they are out of view? And does this memory about objects change when they see other people interacting with those objects?

Melissa also shares fascinating findings from the work in her lab that even babies as young as 6 months old already have an impressive working memory. In the end, Melissa shares personal advice with people who are in the process of applying to graduate school about how to find a program that is the best fit for them.

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:

Melissa's lab: https://www.bu.edu/cdl/developing-minds-lab/
Melissa's Twitter: @levels_of

Papers mentioned in this episode:

Conceptually rich, perceptually sparse: Object representations in 6-month-olds’ working memory

https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2019/01/2019-KibbeLeslie-PsychScience.pdf

Two-year-olds use past experiences to accomplish novel goals

https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2021/09/2021-BlankenshipKibbe-JECP.pdf

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/

Bella's Twitter: @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you think of this episode or the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

76 - Robert Cialdini: A Life of Influence Dec 15, 2022

Eric chats with Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and the world’s leading scholar on the psychology of influence. His books on influencing and persuading others have been translated into 44 languages and have sold over 7 million copies.

In this episode, Eric and Bob talk about Bob’s adventurous and amusing journey into psychology and studying influence. If you want to influence others, what can you do? Can these strategies be used for unethical purposes? Do people underestimate how easily they are influenced by others? How has Bob used these strategies in his own life? How can academics have more influence and design better experiments? Finally, how can I influence our wonderful listeners of this podcast to leave a review and spread the word?
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:

Bob's personal website
Bob's website about influence
Bob's new edition of Influence
Bobs' Twitter @RobertCialdini
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

75 - Russ Poldrack: What can neuroimaging research tell us about the brain and why is reproducible neuroscience important? Dec 08, 2022

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

74 - Johannes Eichstaedt: Is Social Media to Blame for Mental Illness? Dec 01, 2022

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

73 - Juliana Schroeder: Mistakenly Seeking Solitude Nov 24, 2022

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.
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:

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

72 - Maria Arredondo: When babies need to learn two languages Nov 17, 2022

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

71 - Tessa West: Dealing with Toxic Coworkers Nov 10, 2022

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.
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:

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

70 - Julia Leonard: Young children's effort allocation and persistence in learning Nov 03, 2022

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.
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:
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

69 - Robin Dunbar: How Many People Can You Be Friends With? Oct 27, 2022

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.
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:

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

68 - Special Episode: Join the BTS Conference! (Big Team Science, not the K-pop band.) Oct 20, 2022

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.
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:

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/

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

67 - Special Episode: Behind the Scenes of Paths to PhD Oct 13, 2022

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

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:

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

66 - Shai Davidai: Pursuing Status in a Zero-Sum World Oct 06, 2022

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?
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:

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

65 - Viridiana Benitez: The Power of Predictability Sep 29, 2022

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.
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:

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/

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

64 - Claude Steele: How Trust Reduces Stereotype Threat Sep 22, 2022

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!
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:

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

63 - Anne Scheel: Why Most Psychological Research Findings Are Not Even Wrong Sep 15, 2022

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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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

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/

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

Quick Announcement Sep 08, 2022

We now have a Substack! https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com
Subscribe with your email to stay on track with our podcast. And become part of an ever-growing community of psyched listeners from over 190 countries around the world. :)
We’d love to hear your thoughts and allow all you wonderful listeners to chat with each other about new episodes. This is where all that will be possible!

62 - Carol Dweck & Matt Dixon: The Neuroscience of Intelligent Decisions Sep 08, 2022

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.
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:

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

61 - Chaz Firestone: Melting Ice With Your Mind Sep 01, 2022

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

60 - Robb Willer: Why Your Political Enemy Is Not as Violent as You Think Aug 25, 2022

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

59 - Kevin Binning: How to Foster Equity in College Science Courses Aug 18, 2022

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.
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:

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
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

58 - Susan Fiske: A Life of Studying Diversity and Stereotyping Aug 11, 2022

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!
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:

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

57 - Moira Dillon: Commonsense Psychology in Human Infants and Machines Aug 04, 2022

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.

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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

56 - Daniel Gilbert: Stumbling Into Psychology Jul 28, 2022

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?
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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

55 - Jordan Starck: How University Diversity Rationales Inform Student Preferences and Outcomes Jul 21, 2022

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!

54 - Mina Cikara: Hate Crimes Against Minorities Jul 14, 2022

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

53 - Mimi Liljeholm: The Neuroscience of Agency, Learning, and How It Helps Us Understand AI Jul 07, 2022

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/

52 - Jay Van Bavel: The Power of Us Jun 30, 2022

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!

51 - Elika Bergelson: How Babies Learn Words Jun 23, 2022

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).

50 - Michael Kraus: The US Is More Unequal Than You Think Jun 16, 2022

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

49 - Kurt Gray: Understanding Moral Disagreement Jun 09, 2022

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!

48 - Nicholas Coles: Asking Big Question with Big-team Science Jun 02, 2022

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/

47 - David Dunning: The Psychology of Trust and Unwarranted Cynicism May 26, 2022

Eric chats with David Dunning, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Self and Social Insight Lab. The lab studies questions such as how well do people know themselves–and their competence and character? How and when do people successfully engage in self-deception? How good are people as amateur psychologists–trying to anticipate the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others? Most famously, Dave has worked on what is called the Dunning Kruger Effect, where the least competent individuals in a domain tend to be the most overconfident in their skills.

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

46 - Marlone Henderson: The Burden and Benefits of Scheduling Time for Charity May 19, 2022

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!

45 - Tiffany Brannon: Moving Toward More Inclusive Institutions through "Pride and Prejudice" May 12, 2022

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/
--------
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!

44 - Lasana Harris: Moving Beyond Stereotypes When Encountering Strangers May 05, 2022

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!

43 - Henrike Moll: The Nuances of Theory of Mind - How Young Children Understand Others' Perspectives and Beliefs Apr 28, 2022

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!

42 - Anuj Shah: Knowledge of Strangers and Community Policing Apr 21, 2022

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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41 - Vanessa Bohns: You Have More Influence Than You Think Apr 14, 2022

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

40 - Ashley Thomas: How Children Use Saliva Sharing to Infer Close Relationships Apr 07, 2022

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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39 - Robert Rosenthal: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies And The Pygmalion Effect Mar 31, 2022

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

38 - Angie Johnston: How Studying Dogs (!) Helps Us Understand Human Social Learning Mar 24, 2022

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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37 - Molly Crockett: Moral Outrage, Trust During Covid, And Incentives in Academia Mar 17, 2022

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

36 - Gillian Sandstrom: Talking to Strangers Mar 10, 2022

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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35 - Diego Gambetta: Trust, Distrust, and Cynicism Mar 03, 2022

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

34 - Fiery Cushman: The Possibility of Violence Feb 24, 2022

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.

33 - Jon Jachimowicz: Should You Follow Your Passion? Feb 17, 2022

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

32 - Ethan Kross: Why We Talk to Ourselves and How to Make Our Inner Voices Work in Our Favor Feb 10, 2022

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

31 - Tom Gilovich: Judging Individuals, Judging Groups Feb 03, 2022

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

30 - Claudia Haase: Emotion Regulation in Couples Jan 27, 2022

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/

29 - Axel Cleeremans: The Study of Consciousness, Cognition, and Decision-Making Jan 20, 2022

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!

28 - Kateri McRae: How Emotions are Generated Jan 13, 2022

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

27 - David Lagnado: How Causal Reasoning Can Help Us Make Better Judgments and Solve Criminal Cases Jan 06, 2022

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

26 - Richard Wilkinson: Inequality, Health, and Positive Psychology Dec 30, 2021

Marianne and Eric chat with Professor Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham. Richard is author most recently of the book The Inner Level, and co-founder of The Equality Trust.
In this episode, Richard shares his research on the detrimental and wide-ranging psychological effects of income inequality. He discusses how inequality impoverishes everyone's health, trust, and psychological well-being, even for those "winning" in the income distribution. Richard argues that while positive psychology needs to better understand societal predictors of when people flourish, the field already has discovered many insights that are plainly ignored by policy makers and other shapers of society. Finally, he shares how income inequality is visible and impactful on an everyday basis, and why a more equal society would also do a better job at fighting climate change.
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 The Spirit Level
Book The Inner Level
More information: www.inequality.org
Richard's @ProfRGWilkinson
Marianne's website
Marianne's Twitter @MarianneReddan

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

25 - Brian Nosek: The Pursuit of Open and Reproducible Science Dec 23, 2021

Joseph chats with Brian Nosek, co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. The Center's mission is to increase the openness, integrity and reproducibility of scientific research. Brian is also a professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia where he runs the Implicit Social Cognition Lab. Brian studies the gap between values and practices with the goal of understanding why the gap exists, its consequences and how to reduce it. Brian co-founded Project Implicit, a collaborative research project that examines implicit cognition - thoughts and attitudes that occur outside our awareness. In 2015, he was named one of Nature’s 10 and to the Chronicle for Higher Education Influence list. He won the 2018 Golden Goose Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science - only the 2nd time a psychologist has won the award. Brian received his PhD from Yale University in 2002.
In this episode, Brian discusses his 2021 Annual Review piece titled Replicability, Robustness and Reproducibility in Psychological Science; the paper reflects on the progress and challenges of the science reform movement in the last decade. Brian and Joseph talk about measures researchers and institutions can take to improve research reliability; they also reimagine how we fund and publish studies, share lessons learnt from the pandemic, and share resources for learning more about the reform movement.

Paper: Nosek, B. A., Hardwicke, T. E., Moshontz, H., Allard, A., Corker, K. S., Almenberg, A. D., ... & Vazire, S. (2021). Replicability, robustness, and reproducibility in psychological science.
Accessible preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/ksfvq/

24 - Paul Rozin: Improving Psychology Dec 16, 2021

Eric chats with Paul Rozin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Paul is one of the world’s leading experts in a variety of fields, ranging from cultural to moral to social psychology. He has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for 2007.
In this episode, Paul gives an update on his influential 2001 paper “Social Psychology and Science: Some Lessons from Solomon Asch,” which criticized the way psychology was conducted at the time (and is still being conducted today). In a far-reaching conversation, Eric and Paul discuss what natural and social sciences can learn from each other, why psychology should identify with both, what Paul’s relationship with Solomon Asch was like, why people’s tendency to focus on the negative is especially dangerous in the moral domain, and what it is like studying ethnic conflicts. Finally, Paul announces his new and upcoming 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:
Paul's Solomon Asch Paper

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

23 - Special Episode: What Is It Like to Get (Paid) Summer Research Experience at CSLI? Dec 09, 2021

In this episode, Natalia, a former CSLI intern, chats with Erica Yoon, the teaching coordinator for the CSLI Summer Internship Program. Along with hearing from other former interns, they go over the structure and overarching goals of the program, and how it fits into the overall mission of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). Erica is particularly excited about attracting diverse students to the program and offers some insight into the application process.
For more information on CSLI, you can visit the center's webpage (https://www-csli.stanford.edu/) or follow the official Twitter feed (@StanfordCSLI).
For detailed information about applying to the summer internship, please visit the application page (https://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli-summer-internship-program-2022)
The CSLI Internship Program is headed by Michael Frank (Principal Investigator) and Christopher Potts (Co-Principal Investigator). It is funded by the NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program (Award #1950223).

Special thanks to participating alumni:

Nicholas Wright, College of William & Mary

Jiayi Wang, Boston University

Jon Saad-Falcon, Georgia Institute of Technology

Shayan Hooshmand, Columbia University

22 - Kelly McGonigal: Communicating Psychology Dec 02, 2021

Eric chats with Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection. She is the best-selling author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress. Her TED talk, "How to Make Stress Your Friend," is one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, with over 27 million views. Kelly’s latest book, The Joy of Movement, explores why physical exercise is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. In January 2020, Oprah Magazine named Kelly the first ever O! Visionary, people whose groundbreaking way of seeing the world mean a better future for us all.
In this episode, Eric and Kelly chat about science communication, and the joys and challenges that come from engaging with the public about the latest findings from psychology at a time where many distrust science, and where psychologists themselves have become skeptical about the accuracy of their findings.
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:
Kelly's latest book The Joy of Movement
Kelly's TED talk on stress
Kelly's Twitter @kellymcgonigal

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

21 - James Gross: Building Emotion Regulation Skills During the Pandemic and Beyond Nov 18, 2021

Kate chats with James Gross, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Lab. His work focuses on emotions: What they are, how they unfold over time, and how people regulate them in different contexts. In this episode, James shares insights from a recent study examining the effects of brief emotion regulation interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic across 87 countries. James also discusses the broader implications of his work and talks about how people can learn to work with their emotions instead of fighting against them.

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01173-x

20 - Jillian Jordan: Victimhood and Morality Nov 11, 2021

Eric chats with Jillian Jordan, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Jillian’s work has focused on human morality and the role that reputation plays in shaping cooperative behavior. Her fascinating research has integrated methods from psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary game theory and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Guardian.
In this episode, Jillian discusses her new paper on the Virtuous Victim Effect: victims of wrongdoing are seen as more moral than nonvictims. She explains this finding with what is called the Justice Restoration Hypothesis: seeing victims as morally good people makes the wrongdoing seem unjust, which motivates people to help the victim and punish the perpetrator. Jillian then chats about the philosophy guiding her research, and why appealing to people’s concerns about how others see them can be a powerful way to make the world a better place.
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:
Jillian's paper
Jillian's Twitter @Jill_Jord

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

19 - Michal Strahilevitz: Teaching Happiness Nov 03, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Dr. Michal Strahilevitz. Michal is currently a marketing professor at Saint Mary’s College of California. Her research focuses on how emotions affect decision-making in a variety of contexts. In addition to being an enthusiastic researcher, Michal is an amazing teacher. She has won teaching awards from three different universities. blogs for Psychology Today and is often quoted in the global media outlets. She is particularly passionate about helping people become happier, healthier, and more resilient. In today's episode, Michal shares her journey both creating and teaching her favorite course: The Science of Happiness and Well-Being.

To hear from five scholars whose research and teaching focuses on happiness, watch Michal’s recent panel discussion on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Az9N0eBUY

Learn More About Michal and her Work:

Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/michal-ann-strahilevitz-phd and https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-money-and-your-heart

Saint Mary’s College Profile: https://works.bepress.com/michal-strahilevitz/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingprof/

Twitter: @MarketingProf

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marketingprof/

18 - Abigail Marsh: Surprising Predictors of Everyday Kindness Oct 28, 2021

Eric chats with Abigail Marsh, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Georgetown. Her work has focused on phenomena as diverse as empathy, altruism, aggression, and psychopathy. In 2017, Abby published her book, The Fear Factor, describing her fascinating research with extreme altruists on the one hand and individuals with psychopathy on the other. She is the former President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society.
In this episode, Abby challenges the common assumption that individualism means selfishness. Instead, she has found that individualism predicts more kindness, just like being healthy and wealthy predicts being kinder to others. Eric and Abby discuss if our understanding of individualism is wrong, if kindness might look different in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures, and if people are too cynical these days.
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:
Abby's paper
Abby's book The Fear Factor
Abby's Twitter @aa_marsh

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

17 - Scott Barry Kaufman: The Light Triad - A Psychology of Everyday Saints Oct 21, 2021

Eric chats with Scott Barry Kaufman, cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist renowned for a series of groundbreaking books such as Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, Wired to Create, and, most recently, Transcend. Scott is founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential and has taught various classes at universities such as Columbia, Yale, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania. He hosts the #1 psychology podcast in the world, “The Psychology Podcast,” with over 20 million downloads. He has written for outlets such as The Atlantic, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review.
In this episode, Scott discusses his latest research on what he calls the “light triad.” While many researchers have been concerned with what is called the “dark triad,” encompassing features of everyday psychopaths, Scott and his co-authors have started to investigate what makes for an everyday saint. Eric and Scott discuss that we have more everyday saints among us than we think and that everyone is a mix of everyday saint and psychopath.
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:
Scott's article on the light triad in the Scientific American
Scott's paper on the light triad
Scott's Twitter @sbkaufman

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

16 - Erin Westgate: Why People Would Rather Shock Themselves Than Sit Alone with Their Thoughts Oct 14, 2021

Eric chats with Erin Westgate, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida. The work from Erin’s lab has focused on topics such as thinking for pleasure and boredom and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. Erin has famously found that people would rather shock themselves than sit alone with their thoughts for a few minutes!
In this episode, Erin discusses the question we all have in mind when we hear about this finding: Why? More precisely, what makes thinking often so unpleasant? And how can we make it more pleasurable? How can we avoid boredom? And should we avoid it in the first place?
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:
Erin's paper
Erin's Twitter @ErinWestgate

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

15 - Robert Sapolsky: Why Society Would Be Fairer If We Stopped Believing in Free Will Oct 07, 2021

Eric chats with Robert Sapolsky, Stanford Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery. Robert is a world-renowned academic and author of highly successful books such as A Primate’s Memoir, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. His Stanford lectures were among the first to be made available online across the entire university and have been watched tens of millions of times. Robert is a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. He is a highly engaging teacher and lecturer, not least because of his wonderful sense of humor.
In this episode, Robert announces his upcoming (yet-to-be-written) book “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.” Robert discusses when and how he came to give up his belief in free will, and why we all should if we want to live in a fairer society. However, Eric and Robert also discuss some alluring upsides of believing in free will, and Robert acknowledges he’d love to swallow the blue pill, allowing him to believe in free will again.
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:
Robert's latest book Behave

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

14 - Alison Gopnik: How Can Understanding Childhood Help Us Build Better AI? Sep 30, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Alison Gopnik, Professor at the Department of Psychology and Affiliate Professor at Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. Alison is not only a great cognitive scientist and philosopher who has made many groundbreaking contributions to the field, but also a great science communicator. Alison authored multiple bestselling books, including The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, The Gardener, and the Carpenter. She also writes widely about cognitive science and psychology for multiple national outlets including the NYT, the Atlantic, and so on. In this episode, we discussed one of her recent review pieces on the role of childhood in solving the explore-exploit dilemma, a challenge to contemporary artificial intelligence.
Article: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0502
To learn more about Alison's research or her writings, you can visit her personal website or her lab's website. You can also follow Alison on Twitter (@AlisonGopnik).

13 - Wade Davis: A More Tolerant And Compassionate Mindset For Everyday Life Sep 23, 2021

Eric chats with Wade Davis, Professor of Anthropology at UBC. Wade has a fantastically diverse background: Next to being a prolific academic with 22 published books, he was also a long-time Explorer-In-Residence at the National Geographic Society, taking him to what seems like every country on this planet. He is a professional photographer and has produced 18 documentary films based on his travels. In 2018, he became an honorary citizen of Colombia. He has become famous around the world advocating for the diverse indigenous cultures of the planet.
In this episode, Wade talks about the importance of an open-minded anthropological mindset in everyday life, how anthropology has traditionally been fighting for tolerance and compassion, and briefly discusses his newest book: Magdalena, River of Dreams.
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:
Wade's Scientific American article
Wade's latest book

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

12 - Tobias Gerstenberg: Whose Fault Is It? Causal Judgments in Everyday Life Sep 16, 2021

Eric chats with Tobias Gerstenberg, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford where he runs the Causality in Cognition Lab. His lab focuses on the cognitive processes involved in causal judgments: How are physical events caused? How do we use counterfactual thinking to attribute causation?
In this episode, Tobi talks about his recent paper summarizing these lines of research. In the second half, he discusses broader implications: how do we make causal judgments in the social and moral domain?
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:
Tobi's paper
Tobi's Twitter @tobigerstenberg

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

11 - Special Episode: The Past, Present and Future of the Paths to Ph.D. Event Sep 08, 2021

For this week’s episode, we planned something special. Each year, the Stanford psychology department hosts Paths to Ph.D., a free, open-to-public information session on how to apply to Ph.D. programs and research positions in psychology. This year’s event is scheduled on Saturday, October 16th from 10:00 am-5:00 pm and the application deadline is on September 17th. In this episode, we invited Lauren Borchers, a rising 4thyear Ph.D. student in the department, and Dr. Camilla Griffiths, a recent graduate of the department. They are two pivotal figures in the shaping of this event. 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 Paths to Ph.D.
Paths to Ph.D. is an event initiated and organized by the diversity committee in the Psychology Department. The Diversity Committee consists of student members (Since 2020: Sai Auelua, Lauren Borchers, Akshay Jagadeesh, Sama Radwan, Andrea Sims, and Nicky Sullivan; New members: Anjie Cao, Leigh Chu, Nicole Corso, Emily Kubota, Catherine Thomas, and Jenny Yang) and faculty members (Kalanit Grill-Spector, Steven Roberts, Claude Steele, Greg Walton).
To learn more about the event, visit this website: https://psychology.stanford.edu/diversity/paths-phd

10 - Hyowon Gweon: What Makes Us So Good at Learning from Each Other? Aug 28, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Hyo Gweon, an associate professor at Stanford Psychology Department. Hyo directs Social Learning Lab, where the research focus is our abilities to learn from others and teach others. In this episode, she will share with us a very recent review article that came out on Trends in Cognitive Sciences titled "Inferential social learning: Cognitive foundations of human social learning and teaching". Is learning from others really that different from learning about other things in the world? What makes humans so good at learning from other people and enable others to learn from them? Listen to this episode to find out.
The paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661321001789
To learn more about Hyo's research, you can visit her lab's website: http://sll.stanford.edu/index.html

09 - Alan Fiske: The Problems with Labeling Emotions, And the Case for a New Emotion Aug 26, 2021

Eric chats with Alan Fiske, Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. Alan is the author of multiple books, including Structures of Social Life and Virtuous Violence. Alan discusses why labeling emotions can often lead us to misunderstand our emotions. He then makes the case for a new emotion: Kama Muta, or “being moved, touched, stirred, having a rapturous experience, or tender feelings toward cuteness.” Eric and Alan discuss newest work on Kama Muta, produced by the Kama Muta Lab at UCLA, and Alan introduces his newest book called “Kama Muta: Discovering the Connecting Emotion.”
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:
Alan's paper on labeling emotions
Alan's latest book on Kama Muta

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

08 - Judith Fan: The Wonders of Playing With Blocks Aug 14, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Judy Fan, Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego. Judy’s research is at the intersection of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, she discusses a new line of research in her lab exploring how people learn about objects by trying to build them from scratch. She and her team recruited people online to play a game where they aimed to reconstruct various block towers and analyzed the types of mistakes they made, as well as how they got better at the game over time. Insights from experiments like these may help reveal the cognitive principles that govern how people "reverse-engineer" how things are made — from how an unfamiliar dish was prepared to how a song was composed. You can learn more about this project by visiting this site: https://github.com/cogtoolslab/block_construction and read their paper here: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/pdf/mccarthy_cogsci_2020.pdf
To learn more about Judy Fan's research, check out her lab's website: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/. You can also follow her on Twitter (@judyefan).

07 - Ovul Sezer: The Case for Sharing Good News Aug 12, 2021

Eric chats with Ovul Sezer, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at UNC Kenan-Flagler. Ovul’s research focuses on impression mismanagement, or the mistakes we make as we try to impress others. Her research has been featured in outlets such as Time Magazine and Forbes Magazine.
In this episode, Ovul discusses her recent paper on Hiding Success: People are often reluctant to share good news with others, but Ovul’s research suggests that this can harm their relationships and create competitive cultures. Ovul and Eric then make a special “pact,” and encourage listeners to do the same.
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:
Ovul's paper
Ovul's Twitter @ovulsezer

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

06 - Deon Benton: What a Computational Model Can Tell Us About Babies' Inner (Moral) Life? Jul 31, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Deon Benton, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College. He directs the Causality, Mind, and Computational Modeling Lab. Deon investigates causal learning in infants and children with a particular focus on those mechanisms and processes that support such learning. He uses both behavioral research and computational (connectionist) modeling to examine this topic. In this episode, he will be sharing with us his recent research on using a connectionist model to investigate infants’ understanding of morality.
You can read more about Deon's research on his lab's website: https://www.cmcmlab.com.
His podcast on developmental psychology: It's Innate
You can also follow him on Twitter @DeonTBenton

05 - Linda Skitka: Moral Convictions Jul 29, 2021

Eric chats with Linda Skitka, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Linda runs a very prolific lab on many things social, political, and moral psychology. Linda is a former president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and her work has been covered in outlets such as Science Magazine, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times.
In this episode, Linda and Eric chat about moral convictions: why are we so morally convicted about so many things these days? How are issues moralized and demoralized? How do emotions factor into this? How do we stop our moral convictions from disrupting our relationships? Also, what does it all have to do with overflowing toilets? Finally, Eric asks Linda the biggest of questions: is there moral truth?
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:
Linda's paper on moral conviction
Linda's Twitter @LindaSkitka

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

04 - Edouard Machery: What Is A Replication? Jul 17, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Edouard Machery, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. Edouard's main research focuses on the intersection between cognitive science and philosophy. In this episode, Edouard shares his recent work on a topic that is extremely important for psychology today: replication. In an era of the replication crisis, it is more important than ever to understand the concept of replication. What are we really talking about when we are talking about replication? Is preregistration the cure-all magic for the crisis? Why is scientific reform so difficult? These are the questions Edouard ponders on. You can learn more about his research on his personal website.
Paper: Machery, E. (2020). What is a replication?. Philosophy of Science, 87(4), 545-567.

03 - Thomas Talhelm: Is Our Understanding of Collectivism Wrong? A New Theory of Responsibilism Jul 15, 2021

Eric chats with Thomas Talhelm, Professor of Behavioral Science at UChicago's Booth School of Business. Thomas is a cultural psychologist who has written extensively about how culture affects how we think, feel, and behave. Thomas has spent several years living in China. His work has been covered in outlets all across the globe including National Geographic, Time Magazine, BBC Future, and the New York Times.
In this episode, Eric and Thomas chat about how both academics and non-academics might have a somewhat mistaken view of what collectivistic cultures (such as China) are really like. As they share travel stories and discuss research on the topic, Thomas introduces his theory of Responsibilism as an alternative to Collectivism: the focus in many cultures is not on positive feelings towards the collective - but on duties and responsibilities.
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:
Thomas' op-ed
Thomas' Twitter @ThomasTalhelm

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

02 - Michael Frank: The Universals and Variations of Children's Early Language Learning Jul 08, 2021

In this episode, Anjie chats with Michael Frank, a professor in the Psychology Department here at Stanford University. He is the David and Lucile Packard Professor of Human Biology and is the director of the Symbolic Systems Program. Mike studies language use and language learning, with a focus on early word learning. In this episode, they talk about his recent book on early language acquisition, Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning: The Wordbank Project. Mike also shares how the research has informed his own parenting practices.

Book link: https://langcog.github.io/wordbank-book/
Wordbank project: http://wordbank.stanford.edu/

01 - Jamil Zaki: Cynicism and Market Cognition Jul 01, 2021

Eric chats with Jamil Zaki, professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Jamil is an expert in all things empathy, and he is the author of The War for Kindness. His writings have appeared in outlets such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Time Magazine.
In this episode, Eric and Jamil chat about their recent paper on how market societies shape people's moral behavior. They discuss why people seem so cynical these days, and why cynicism can be a double-edged sword.
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:
Jamil and Eric's paper on market cognition
Jamil's Twitter @zakijam

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

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