Stanford Psychology Podcast - Stanford Psychology

Latest Episodes:

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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.
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

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

Show notes

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