All Episodes

#349 Jean-François Bonnefon: Morality, Machine Behavior, and Moral Machines

Jul 20, 2020

Dr. Jean-François Bonnefon (PhD, cognitive psychology) is a Research Director at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, affiliated to the Toulouse School of Economics, the Toulouse School of Management, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. He holds the Moral AI chair at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute, and is the president of the European Commission expert group on the ethics of driverless mobility. He conducts research on decisions which have a moral component, especially in the context of machine ethics and human-AI cooperation. His research appeared in 100+ academic articles, in outlets that include Science, Nature, and PNAS. More»
#348 Robyn Bluhm: Medicine, Psychiatry, And Neurosexism

Jul 13, 2020

Dr. Robyn Bluhm is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University. Her research examines philosophical issues in neuroscience and in medicine, with a particular focus on the relationship between ethical and epistemological questions in these areas. She has written extensively on the philosophy of evidence-based practice and on the use of functional neuroimaging in psychiatry. She is a co-editor of Neurofeminism: Issues at the Intersection of Feminist Theory and Cognitive Science. More»
#347 Laura Crucianelli: Interoception, Affective Touch, And Anorexia Nervosa

Jul 6, 2020

Dr. Laura Crucianelli currently works as a postdoctoral researcher in Henrik Erhsson’s lab at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm. Dr. Crucianelli completed her PhD at the Department of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire, and in collaboration with University College London under the supervision of Dr. Paul Jenkinson and Dr. Katerina Fotopoulou. Her PhD project investigated affective touch, sense of body ownership and interoceptive awareness in both healthy and clinical populations. More»
#346 Peter Jonason: Mating, The Dark Triad, Booty Calls, And Evo Psych

Jun 29, 2020

Dr. Peter Jonason is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Padova, Italy. By training he is a social/personality psychologist who uses evolutionary theory to derive predictions and account for observable phenomena in (mostly) personality, individual differences, mating strategies, and sexuality. More»
#345 Colin Holbrook: Threat, And Human-Robot Interactions

Jun 22, 2020

Dr. Colin Holbrook is Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California Merced. He researches decision-making under contexts of threat, with particular focus on political orientation, group prejudice, and the representation of mental states. More»
#344 Joseph Henrich: Cultural Evolution, Human Cooperation, and WEIRD Psychology

Jun 19, 2020

Dr. Joseph Henrich is Professor and chair of The Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is interested in the question of how humans evolved from "being a relatively unremarkable primate a few million years ago to the most successful species on the globe", and how culture affected our genetic development. He is also the author of The Secret of Our Success and The WEIRDest People in World. More»
#343 Marco Del Giudice: The Evolutionary Psychology of Gender Differences (Part 1)

Jun 15, 2020

Dr. Marco Del Giudice is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico. In his work he explores a wide range of topics at the intersection of human behavior, evolution, and development. His approach is interdisciplinary and driven by the quest for theoretical synthesis. Over the years he has developed some broad, integrative models: the Adaptive Calibration Model of individual differences in stress responsivity (with Bruce Ellis and Birdie Shirtcliff); an evolutionary-developmental model of sex differences in attachment styles; and a unifying life history framework for evolutionary psychopathology. Most of his current empirical work is devoted to testing, advancing, and refining these models with a variety of research methods. He’s the author of Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach. More»
#342 H. Clark Barrett: On Mental Adaptations And Modularity Of Mind

Jun 8, 2020

Dr. H. Clark Barrett is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at UCLA. He is a biological anthropologist specializing in evolutionary psychology, the study of the mind’s evolved mechanisms and processes. In his work he uses methods from anthropology and psychology to examine universals and variation in how thinking develops across cultures. He conducts field research among the Shuar, an indigenous culture in southeast Ecuador, as well as in Los Angeles. His research has focused on learning and conceptual development in several domains, including “theory of mind,” or the ability to make inferences about others’ thoughts and intentions, and learning about danger. He has also collaborated with a variety of anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists on a variety of topics ranging from infant-directed speech to the evolution of morality, and supervise graduate projects on the evolution of cognition. He’s the author of the book The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve. More»
#341 Scott Barry Kaufman - Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization

Jun 1, 2020

Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman is a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He is interested in using his research to help all kinds of minds live a creative, fulfilling, and self-actualized life. He likes to share his enthusiasm of psychology through his teaching, writing, speaking, and podcast. He writes the column Beautiful Minds for Scientific American and hosts The Psychology Podcast, which has received over 10 million downloads. Dr. Kaufman’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review. Dr. Kaufman’s books include Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (with Carolyn Gregoire), Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, and, as editor, Twice Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties and The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence. His new book is Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. More»
#340 Melanie Meng Xue: Economics And Gender In Imperial And Modern China

May 29, 2020

Dr. Melanie Meng Xue is assistant professor in the Social Science Division at New York University in Abu Dhabi. Her research lies at the intersection of economic history and political economy. She has studied the rise of gender-equitable beliefs and the deterioration of civil society in the context of imperial China. By tracing the impact of historical events over time and in various institutional settings, her work isolates the role of values, beliefs and norms in shaping economic and political disparities. Another strand of Dr. Meng Xue’s research concerns the decoding of folklore and mythology as a new approach to understanding historical values. More»