Stanford Psychology Podcast

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 Researc...

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...

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 h...

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...

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...

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 re...

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 translat...

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, no...

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....

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 (lik...

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 ...

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 ...

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,...

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 ...

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 Maker...

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. Cris...

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 fo...

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 episod...

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 ch...

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 ...

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....

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 co...

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 discus...

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 understandin...

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 o...

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, Th...

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 ...

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 ...

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 cou...

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 ...

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 re...

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 ...

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 ...

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 Jo...

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 ...

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...

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 crea...

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 pe...

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 stude...

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...

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 s...

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 re...

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 differen...

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 th...

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 inf...

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 come...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 h...

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 th...

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 ex...

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 abou...

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...

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 ...

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 algor...

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...

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 Beyonc...

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 Valenc...

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, ...

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 Chi...

AN INTERACTIVE TRANSCRIPT IS AVAILABLE FOR THIS EPISODE: https://share.descript.com/view/PDj7Wi7M2oS or on OUR SUBSTACKEric 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 ...

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 a...

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...

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 u...

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 di...

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 (lik...

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 ...

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’ cogniti...

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 pas...

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 influenci...

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 variou...

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...

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...

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 p...

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 epi...

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 Ac...

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 Univer...

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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 th...

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 a...

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 an...

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 comm...

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 cur...

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 ...

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 ...

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 educationa...

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 l...

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, percep...

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.pow...

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. Yo...

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 ...

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 ...

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 i...

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...

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 o...

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 “Prid...

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 undergradua...

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...