Explore every episode of the podcast Stanford Psychology Podcast
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| 138 - Hal Hershfield: Connecting with Your Future Self for a Better Tomorrow | 26 Sep 2024 | 00:37:47 | |
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 | 26 Jul 2024 | 00:37:24 | |
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
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| 128 – Halie Olson: How our Brains Care About our Personal Interests | 14 Mar 2024 | 00:47:01 | |
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. Adani’s website: adaniabutto.com | |||
| 39 - Robert Rosenthal: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies And The Pygmalion Effect | 31 Mar 2022 | 01:30:17 | |
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.” | |||
| 38 - Angie Johnston: How Studying Dogs (!) Helps Us Understand Human Social Learning | 24 Mar 2022 | 00:44:58 | |
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 | 17 Mar 2022 | 00:54:52 | |
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.
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| 36 - Gillian Sandstrom: Talking to Strangers | 10 Mar 2022 | 00:47:18 | |
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. | |||
| 35 - Diego Gambetta: Trust, Distrust, and Cynicism | 03 Mar 2022 | 00:55:07 | |
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.
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| 34 - Fiery Cushman: The Possibility of Violence | 24 Feb 2022 | 00:47:06 | |
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. | |||
| 33 - Jon Jachimowicz: Should You Follow Your Passion? | 17 Feb 2022 | 01:07:02 | |
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.
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| 32 - Ethan Kross: Why We Talk to Ourselves and How to Make Our Inner Voices Work in Our Favor | 10 Feb 2022 | 00:46:11 | |
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 | 03 Feb 2022 | 00:42:52 | |
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. Paper on inequality
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| 30 - Claudia Haase: Emotion Regulation in Couples | 27 Jan 2022 | 00:40:33 | |
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. | |||
| 127 - Guilherme Lichand: Remote Learning Repercussions | 29 Feb 2024 | 00:45:14 | |
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 | |||
| 29 - Axel Cleeremans: The Study of Consciousness, Cognition, and Decision-Making | 20 Jan 2022 | 01:08:09 | |
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 | 13 Jan 2022 | 00:41:46 | |
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 | 06 Jan 2022 | 00:51:21 | |
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. | |||
| 26 - Richard Wilkinson: Inequality, Health, and Positive Psychology | 30 Dec 2021 | 00:59:45 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 25 - Brian Nosek: The Pursuit of Open and Reproducible Science | 23 Dec 2021 | 00:51:23 | |
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. 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. | |||
| 24 - Paul Rozin: Improving Psychology | 16 Dec 2021 | 01:06:27 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 23 - Special Episode: What Is It Like to Get (Paid) Summer Research Experience at CSLI? | 09 Dec 2021 | 00:29:29 | |
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 | 02 Dec 2021 | 00:56:22 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 21 - James Gross: Building Emotion Regulation Skills During the Pandemic and Beyond | 18 Nov 2021 | 00:45:55 | |
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. | |||
| 20 - Jillian Jordan: Victimhood and Morality | 11 Nov 2021 | 00:52:11 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 126 - Michele Gelfand: Culture and Conflict | 15 Feb 2024 | 00:50:16 | |
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. 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 | |||
| 19 - Michal Strahilevitz: Teaching Happiness | 04 Nov 2021 | 00:50:19 | |
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 | 28 Oct 2021 | 00:46:58 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 17 - Scott Barry Kaufman: The Light Triad - A Psychology of Everyday Saints | 21 Oct 2021 | 00:43:14 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 16 - Erin Westgate: Why People Would Rather Shock Themselves Than Sit Alone with Their Thoughts | 14 Oct 2021 | 00:42:48 | |
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! Eric's website | |||
| 15 - Robert Sapolsky: Why Society Would Be Fairer If We Stopped Believing in Free Will | 07 Oct 2021 | 00:50:38 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 14 - Alison Gopnik: How Can Understanding Childhood Help Us Build Better AI? | 01 Oct 2021 | 00:40:34 | |
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. | |||
| 13 - Wade Davis: A More Tolerant And Compassionate Mindset For Everyday Life | 23 Sep 2021 | 00:49:32 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 12 - Tobias Gerstenberg: Whose Fault Is It? Causal Judgments in Everyday Life | 16 Sep 2021 | 00:45:12 | |
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? Eric's website | |||
| 11 - Special Episode: The Past, Present and Future of the Paths to Ph.D. Event | 08 Sep 2021 | 00:37:20 | |
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. | |||
| 10 - Hyowon Gweon: What Makes Us So Good at Learning from Each Other? | 28 Aug 2021 | 00:40:55 | |
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. | |||
| 125 - Marginalia Episode: Cristina Salvador on Cultural Psychology in Latin America | 01 Feb 2024 | 00:36:11 | |
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 | |||
| 09 - Alan Fiske: The Problems with Labeling Emotions, And the Case for a New Emotion | 26 Aug 2021 | 00:54:04 | |
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.” Eric's website | |||
| 08 - Judith Fan: The Wonders of Playing With Blocks | 14 Aug 2021 | 00:37:47 | |
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 | |||
| 07 - Ovul Sezer: The Case for Sharing Good News | 12 Aug 2021 | 01:05:50 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 06 - Deon Benton: What a Computational Model Can Tell Us About Babies' Inner (Moral) Life? | 01 Aug 2021 | 00:48:23 | |
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. | |||
| 05 - Linda Skitka: Moral Convictions | 29 Jul 2021 | 00:44:08 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 04 - Edouard Machery: What Is A Replication? | 17 Jul 2021 | 00:41:29 | |
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. | |||
| 03 - Thomas Talhelm: Is Our Understanding of Collectivism Wrong? A New Theory of Responsibilism | 15 Jul 2021 | 01:01:25 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 02 - Michael Frank: The Universals and Variations of Children's Early Language Learning | 09 Jul 2021 | 00:30:54 | |
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/ | |||
| 01 - Jamil Zaki: Cynicism and Market Cognition | 01 Jul 2021 | 00:50:19 | |
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. Eric's website | |||
| 124 - Oriel FeldmanHall: Punishment, Forgiveness, and Predicting Emotions | 12 Jan 2024 | 00:29:35 | |
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. | |||
| 123 - Jacqueline Gottlieb: Are You Curious About Curiosity? | 07 Dec 2023 | 01:00:05 | |
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. JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up-to-date with the podcast 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 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. | 30 Nov 2023 | 01:08:13 | |
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. Michal's paper on Theory of Mind in LLMs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02083 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? | 09 Nov 2023 | 00:44:32 | |
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.
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 | 26 Oct 2023 | 00:38:17 | |
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. JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up-to-date with the podcast 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 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 | |||