#73 Richard Nisbett: What Social Psychology Tells Us About Cognition
Dr. Richard Nisbett is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He was the recipient of the Donald T. Campbell Award from the American Psychological Association in 1982, and he’s a Guggenheim fellow. He’s also the author of several books, including Culture of Honor, The Geography of Thought, and Mindware.
In today’s episode, we talk about some of the work by Dr. Nisbett on social psychology and human cognition. More specifically: his views on the innate and evolutionary bases of cognition; different cognitive defaults between Eastern and Western peoples; the fact that cognition works mostly at a subconscious level; and cultural differences between northern and southern states of the US, and some of their social and political implications.
Time Links:
How human cognition works
Culture-gene coevolution
Is cognition partly innate?
Evolutionary psychology and the modularity of the mind
Cognition in Eastern and Western peoples
What elements of culture influence cognition?
Culture is not deterministic
Cognition occurs mostly at a subconscious level
Post-hoc rationalizations
Cultural differences between northern and southern states in the US
Follow Dr. Nisbett’s work
Follow Dr. Nisbett’s work:
Faculty page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/
Books: https://tinyurl.com/ybpqa89z
Try the MOOC “Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age”: https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware