Stanford Psychology Podcast - Stanford Psychology

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

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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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

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