All Episodes

#118 Lee Ross: Fundamental Attribution Error, Naïve Realism, and Politics

Dec 28, 2018

Dr. Lee Ross is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and co-founder of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. He’s been the recipient of several awards. The author of three influential books, Human Inference and the Person and the Situation (both with Richard Nisbett) and, more recently, The Wisest One in the Room (with Thomas Gilovich), and many highly cited papers. His research on attributional biases and shortcomings in human inference has exerted a major impact in social psychology and the field of human inference, judgment and decision-making. Among the phenomena he identified and has explored are the fundamental attribution error, the false consensus effect, reactive devaluation, the hostile media phenomenon, and the convictions of naïve realism. More»

#117 Wendy Johnson: Genetics and Environment in Personality and Intelligence

Dec 27, 2018

Dr. Wendy Johnson is Professor of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She also holds the Chair in Differential Development in the University of Edinburgh's Department of Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology. She is known for her research on human intelligence and personality. In 2004, the International Society for Intelligence Research honored her with its John B. Carroll Award for Research Methodology. In 2011, she received the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology, in recognition of her work on the individual differences of intelligence and personality. Topics of her research include: structure of intelligence and personality, life-span development of intelligence and personality, health and aging, genetic and environmental transactions and their influence on behavior, intelligence, and personality. More»

#116 Colin Holbrook: Threat Detection, Group Prejudice, Warfare, and Religion

Dec 24, 2018

Dr. Colin Holbrook is Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He researches decision-making under contexts of threat, with particular focus on political orientation, group prejudice, and the representation of mental states. More»

#115 Alexander Rosenberg: Theory of Mind, History, Mental Illusions, and Nihilism

Dec 21, 2018

Dr. Alexander Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He has been a visiting professor and fellow at the Center for the Philosophy of Science, at the University of Minnesota, as well as the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Oxford University, and a visiting fellow of the Philosophy Department at the Research School of Social Science, of the Australian National University. In 2016 he was the Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol. He has held fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 1993, Dr. Rosenberg received the Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science. In 2006-2007 he held a fellowship at the National Humanities Center. He was also the Phi Beta Kappa-Romanell Lecturer for 2006-2007. He’s the author of both fictional and non-fictional literature, including The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, The Girl from Krakow, and How History Gets Things Wrong. More»

#114 Hugo Mercier: The Enigma of Reason, Modularity, and Cognition

Dec 20, 2018

Dr. Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Institut Jean Nicod), where he works with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Most of his work so far has focused on the function and workings of reasoning. Together with Dan Sperber, he wrote a book that develops and extends the argumentative theory of reasoning, called The Enigma of Reason. More»

#113 Joshua M. Tybur: Disgust, Evolution, Politics, and Social Psychology

Dec 17, 2018

Dr. Joshua M. Tybur is an Associate Professor in the Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology at VU Amsterdam. His work is dedicated to better understanding how people solve some of the fundamental problems of life, including avoiding infectious diseases, obtaining and retaining a mate, and navigating the threats and affordances of interdependence. He approaches these topics with a combination of ideas and techniques from social psychology, personality psychology, and evolutionary biology. More»

#112 Diane Halpern: Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, Critical Thinking, and Creativity

Dec 14, 2018

Dr. Diane Halpern is Dean Emerita of Social Sciences at Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute and former Emerita Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College. She has won many awards for her teaching and research, including an Honorary Award in 2016 from the Federation for Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS) for "scientists who have made important and lasting contributions to the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior" and the 2013 Association for Psychological Science James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for a lifetime of outstanding contributions to applied psychological research, the Outstanding Professor Award from the Western Psychological Association, the American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Distinguished Career Award for Contributions to Education given by the American Psychological Association, and the California State University’s State-Wide Outstanding Professor Award. She is also a past-president of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Teaching of Psychology. Finally, she’s the author of books like Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, and Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking. More»

#111 Nick Chater: The Mind Is Flat, and Our Illusions of Mental Depth

Dec 13, 2018

Dr. Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. He works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. He has over 200 publications, has won four national awards for psychological research, and has served as Associate Editor for the journals Cognitive Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science. He was elected a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in 2010 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012. Dr. Chater is co-founder of the research consultancy Decision Technology, and is on the advisory board of the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insight Team (BIT). He’s also the author of “The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and The Improvised Mind”. More»

#110 Barbara Oakley: Evil Genes, and Pathological Altruism

Dec 10, 2018

SORRY ABOUT THE VIDEO ISSUES. More»

#109 Simon DeDeo: From Atoms to Societies, Emergentism and Reductionism

Dec 7, 2018

THIS TIME, IT’S AUDIO-ONLY. I’VE BEEN HAVING SOME ISSUES WITH THE RECORDING PROGRAM THAT I HOPE TO SOLVE DEFINITELLY IN THE NEAR FUTURE. PLEASE ENJOY! More»