Two Psychologists Four Beers

Latest Episodes:

Episode 24: Heuristics and Biases in the Democratic Primary Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey take a deep dive into the Democratic Primary field, asking what the field of judgment and decision making can teach us about the large and diverse field of Democratic candidates. Why is Biden leading in the polls? Is Elizabeth Warren being helped by Kamala Harris? Why isn’t Biden hurt by progressives’ deep dislike of him? What should we make of one-issue voters?

Bonus: Yoel makes a fearless and consequential prediction. Who will make him stick to his word?

Links:

Miller High Life • RateBeer
Following outcry, American Psychological Association “refocuses” takedown notice program – Retraction Watch
2020 Presidential Candidates | The New York Times
The recognition heuristic: A decade of research — The recognition heuristic exploits the basic psychological capacity for recognition in order to make inferences about unknown quantities in the world
The Adaptive Decision Maker: John W. Payne, James R. Bettman, Eric J. Johnson: 9780521425261: Books - Amazon.ca — The Adaptive Decision Maker argues that people use a variety of strategies to make judgments and choices. The authors introduce a model that shows how decision makers which strategy a person will use in a given situation.
Decoy effect - Wikipedia — In marketing, the decoy effect (or attraction effect or asymmetric dominance effect) is the phenomenon whereby consumers will tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated.
Choice Based on Reasons: The Case of Attraction and Compromise Effects on JSTOR — Choice Based on Reasons: The Case of Attraction and Compromise Effects

Episode 23: Slow-Form Journalism (with Daniel Engber) Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey welcome Slate columnist Daniel Engber to the podcast. Dan talks about the state of science journalism, including what he sees as more skeptical, less credulous reporting. He also talks about the replication crisis in psychology, imposter syndrome in academics, concussion in sport, and the value of blue-ribbon panels opining on the state of science. Dan also delights with his contrarian takes on marathon running, the windchill factor, and a computer’s progress bar.

Bonus: Yoel yet again finds an excuse to drink no beer at all.

Special Guest: Daniel Engber.

Links:

Apex Predator | Off Color Brewing
Folly Brewing Toronto Microbrewery — Imposter Syndrome -- Farmhouse IPA
Everything Is Crumbling — An influential psychological theory, borne out in hundreds of experiments, may have just been debunked. How can so many scientists have been so wrong?
Daryl Bem proved ESP is real. Which means science is broken.
How the progress bar keeps you sane | TED Talk
Don’t Run a Marathon — Running a marathon is a dangerous, expensive, stupid, meaningless task. Don’t do it.
Wind chill is a meaningless number. So why are we still using it?

Episode 22: Blend of Darkness (with Brent Roberts) May 22, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey welcome Professor of Psychology Brent Roberts from the University of Illinois to the podcast. One of the most influential personality psychologists of our day, Brent unleashes his thoughts on broad range of topics: candidate gene studies, personality, conscientiousness, coddling of the American mind, screen-time, senior colleagues, and the replication crisis in psychology. What is personality and how does it change? Why do people love the Myers-Briggs personality test? How would conscientiousness have helped us in our ancestral past? Has helicopter-parenting made American kids fragile and easily debilitated? Has the smartphone actually destroyed a generation? Should we be optimistic about the gains made by the reform movement in psychology?

Bonus: Mickey gives Yoel a surprise gift.

Special Guest: Brent Roberts.

Links:

White Pony Microbrewery — Blend of Darkness is a blend and is made up of "Black Sheep" and "Zumbi" which has then been variously matured in Speyside, whisky, brandy, tequila and Jack Daniel's Bourbon casks. Finally, this oak aged beer has been blended again, this time with "Sheep doesn't get sheep", White Pony's new imperial stout.
Live Transmission Milkshake IPA — Grab me a beer, too!
Naughty Neighbour Pale Ale — Nickel Brook Brewing co. — The Naughty Neighbour is ready to knock your socks (and skates) off! Practically born with her skates on, Naughty Neighbour quickly rose through the ranks to become an undefeated Roller Derby Champ. Just like her, our American Pale Ale is bold, smooth and in-your-face!
Whiskey Barrel Stout | Boulevard Brewing Company — Over-the-top but surprisingly approachable, this twist on the classic style starts with several types of malted barley, rye, oats and wheat.
Brent W Roberts | Psychology at Illinois
5-HTTLPR: A Pointed Review | Slate Star Codex
No Support for Historical Candidate Gene or Candidate Gene-by-Interaction Hypotheses for Major Depression Across Multiple Large Samples. - PubMed - NCBI
The surprise guest
Brent W. Roberts on Twitter: "Progress implies you had a place to move from. There has never been any place to move from than "the association of screen time to well-being in teens is minuscule". Are you claiming that the effect sizes were large and are now small? 1/… https://t.co/4WFOz7shHK"
The New Rules of Research | pigee
Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction | PNAS — In this study, we used large-scale representative panel data to disentangle the between-person and within-person relations linking adolescent social media use and well-being. We found that social media use is not, in and of itself, a strong predictor of life satisfaction across the adolescent population. Instead, social media effects are nuanced, small at best, reciprocal over time, gender specific, and contingent on analytic methods.

Episode 21: Perils of Privilege Apr 24, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey discuss the concept of privilege, the unearned, sometimes invisible conditions of a person’s life that give them advantages that others might not have. What are the benefits of acknowledging one’s privilege and calling it out in others? Are there drawbacks to focusing on the immutable characteristics of a person that might normally proffer advantages? If all our characteristics are unearned, that is products of biology and environment that we have zero control over, should people be praised or blamed for them? But, first, they discuss new internal analyses by Google suggesting it has been overpaying women, not men; they then raise serious concerns about this analysis because it conditioned on a collider, a statistical concept that Yoel and Mickey (to put it generously) struggle to understand.

Bonus: Mickey falls in love with bidets.

Links:

Bidet Attachments by TUSHY | For People Who Poop — Ask me about my butthole
New York Times | Google Finds It's Underpaying Many Men as It Addresses Wage Equity — A survey of employee salaries at Google reaches a surprising conclusion: More men than women were being underpaid
Julia Rohrer's Brilliant Blogpost: That one weird third variable problem nobody ever mentions: Conditioning on a collider – The 100% CI — Causal inference from observational data boils down to assumptions you have to make and third variables you have to take into account. I’m going to talk about a third variable problem today, conditioning on a collider.
Thinking Clearly About Correlations and Causation: Graphical Causal Models for Observational Data - Julia M. Rohrer, 2018 — Certain types of third variables—colliders and mediators—should not be controlled for because that can actually move the estimate of an association away from the value of the causal effect of interest.
BuzzFeed | How Privileged Are you?
What Is Privilege? - YouTube
Privileged | By Kyle Korver — What I’m realizing is, no matter how passionately I commit to being an ally, and no matter how unwavering my support is for NBA and WNBA players of color….. I’m still in this conversation from the privileged perspective of opting in to it.
'The Class Ceiling' Decodes the Cultures of Elite Workplaces - The Atlantic — When two sociologists interviewed highly paid architects, TV producers, actors, and accountants, they encountered work cultures that favor the already affluent.

Episode 20: Apostasy and Dissent (with Sarah Haider) Mar 27, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey talk with Sarah Haider, the co-founder and Executive Director of Ex-Muslims of North America, an organization that advocates for the acceptance of religious dissent and supports those who leave Islam. Sarah talks about her own experience of growing up Muslim and leaving her faith; the unique predicament of and risks for Muslim dissenters; and how US partisan politics make her work more difficult.

Bonus: Sarah gives Mickey pointers on how to avoid using Twitter as an outrage machine, a lesson he sorely needs.

Special Guest: Sarah Haider.

Links:

Ex-Muslims of North America — We Envision A World Where Every Person Is Free To Follow Their Conscience
Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique (AHA Conference 2015) - YouTube — Presented at the American Humanist Association 74th Annual Conference, May 7-10, 2015, in Denver, Colorado.
Ex-Muslims: They left Islam and now tour the US to talk about it - BBC News
Islam’s Ex Factor: An Interview with Sarah Haider and Muhammad Syed - TheHumanist.com
Should Muslims Like Me Be So Critical of Ex-Muslims? - YouTube
List of ex-Muslim organisations - Wikipedia

Episode 19: Two Normies Four Beers Feb 27, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey discuss Kill All Normies, a book written by Angela Nagle about the online culture wars, the rise of transgressive politics, and the disappearance of moderates. But, first they discuss a new journal article titled The Paradox of Viral Outrage suggesting that online pile-ons tend to backfire

Bonus: What does Mickey really think about Christina Hoff Sommers?

Links:

Quillette Social in Toronto
Quillette
The Paradox of Viral Outrage - Takuya Sawaoka, Benoît Monin, 2018 — Moral outrage has traditionally served a valuable social function, expressing group values and inhibiting deviant behavior, but the exponential dynamics of Internet postings make this expression of legitimate individual outrage appear excessive and unjust.
Kill All Normies || Angela Nagle — How internet subcultures are conquering the mainstream, from from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right.
Yelp Reviewers’ Use of ‘Authenticity’ Is White Supremacy in Action - Eater NY — According to a study of Yelp reviews for NYC restaurants, judging restaurants by “authenticity” tends to put non-white owners in a trap
Is a Planned Monument to Women’s Rights Racist? - The New York Times — "I do think we cannot have a statue of two white women representing the vote for all women,”

A Schedule Update (Shomer F*cking Sabbatical) Feb 06, 2019

Show notes

We are going to be on a one-episode-a-month schedule till May. Why? Because Mickey is on sabbatical from his cough incredibly demanding job: ✈️🌴🏖🍹😎

Links:

Bali

Episode 18: What Science and the Humanities Offer Each Other (with Edward Slingerland) Jan 30, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey welcome Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, Edward (Ted) Slingerland from the University of British Columbia to the podcast. Ted discusses what the sciences can offer the humanities, but also how the humanities can enrich science. Ted then discusses his popular book, "Trying Not To Try", where he describes the Chinese concept of Wu-Wei, which can be defined as effortless action or spontaneity and proposes that the ever-striving West could use a lot more of it. Finally, Ted tries in vain to convince Mickey that intoxication is an important, critical part of culture.

Bonus: Did Ted actually say there are downsides to being Dude-like?

Special Guest: Edward (Ted) Slingerland.

Links:

Cantillon Brewery
Brasserie Timmermans
Mort Subite
What Science Offers the Humanities | Edward Slingerland — This book examines some of the deep problems facing current approaches to the study of culture, focusing especially on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledging the problems with Enlightenment objectivism. Slingerland argues that, for the humanities to progress, they need to move beyond the mind-body dualism upon which both postmodernism and objectivism are based.
Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity (9780770437619): Edward Slingerland: Books — A deeply original exploration of the power of spontaneity—an ancient Chinese ideal that cognitive scientists are only now beginning to understand—and why it is so essential to our well-being
Two Psychologists Four Beers - Blog - A Note From Ted Slingerland

Episode 17: Why Trump Won Jan 02, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey discuss Identity Crisis, a new book about the 2016 US presidential election written by the political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck. But first, they talk about the recent controversy over Patreon's ban of a provocative internet personality and what, if any, implications this has for free speech.

Bonus: who is Mickey's favorite Sex and the City character?

Links:

Michael Inzlicht on Twitter: Toilet paper roll — "My departmental rival, @gmacdonalduoft, had this made for our area secret Santa party last night. Now I'm struggling to decide whether I should make it my twitter profile pic.… https://t.co/HYrtwJ4hQu"
Delirium Tremens
Crowdfunding platform Patreon defends itself amid boycott - Business Insider
Stars of ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ Scramble to Save Their Cash Cows
How Kim Cattrall got a date with Pierre Trudeau
Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America: John Sides, Michael Tesler, Lynn Vavreck: 9780691174198: Amazon.com: Books

Episode 16: How Polarized Are We? (with Anne Wilson) Dec 19, 2018

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey sit down with Anne Wilson of Wilfrid Laurier University to discuss free speech, the Lindsay Shepherd case, political polarization, #MeToo, and more.

Bonus: how many tattoos does Mickey have, and is that why he's less trustworthy?

Special Guest: Anne Wilson.

Links:

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