psychology

#1010 Michael Price: The Biocultural Evolution of Religion, and Universal Darwinism

Oct 24, 2024

Dr. Michael Price is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Brunel University London. His past research has focused mainly on evolutionary moral psychology. More recently, his primary research interests have been the biological and biocultural evolution of religio-spirituality, and “Universal Darwinism”, which investigates the anti-entropic, creative power of Darwinian selection across all natural domains, from physics to biology to culture. More»
#1009 Jaroslava Valentova: Sexual Orientation, Gender Expression, and Physical Attractiveness

Oct 21, 2024

Dr. Jaroslava Valentova is a Professor Doctor at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. She has research experience in evolutionary psychology, anthropology and human ethology. Her primary research interest is human sexual orientation, and its proximate and ultimate causes. She further focuses on research of masculinity and femininity, differences between men and women in sexual strategies, sexual orientation attributions, mate preferences and mate choice and she has also been studying dynamics of long-term relationships, such as factors influencing relationship satisfaction, homogamy, complementarity, and jealousy. More»
#1008 Paul Smaldino: Modeling Social Behavior

Oct 18, 2024

Dr. Paul Smaldino is an Associate Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences and faculty in the Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate program at the University of California Merced, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Analytic Political Engagement and the Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience. Extramurally, he is an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He studies how behaviors emerge and evolve in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures, as well as how those pressures can themselves evolve. He is the author of Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution. More»
#999 Tobias Gerstenberg: How We Think About Causality and Moral Responsibility

Sep 27, 2024

Dr. Tobias Gerstenberg is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, where he leads the Causality in Cognition Lab (CICL). Dr. Gerstenberg's research is highly interdisciplinary. It combines ideas from philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and the legal sciences to better understand higher-level cognitive phenomena such as causal inference and moral judgment. More»
#996 Robin Gregory & Brooke Moore - Sorting It Out: Supporting Teenage Decision Making

Sep 20, 2024

Dr. Robin Gregory is Senior Research Scientist with Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon, and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. More»
#994 Louis Bachaud: Bad Science and Misogyny in the Manosphere

Sep 16, 2024

Louis Bachaud is a PhD student at the University of Kent and the University of Lille. His research investigates the history and sociology of science. In particular, he studies the contemporary (mis)understandings of evolutionary sciences and their appropriations in online debates around sex and gender. More»
#993 Peter Etchells - Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time (and how to spend it better)

Sep 13, 2024

Dr. Peter Etchells is Professor of Psychology and Science Communication at Bath Spa University, UK. His research looks at the behavioral and wellbeing effects of playing video games, and he is also interested in metascientific issues regarding best practice in digital technology effects research. He is the author of Lost in a Good Game, and more recently, Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time (and how to spend it better). More»
#988 Iris Mauss: The Psychology of Emotion, and the Paradox of Seeking Happiness

Sep 2, 2024

Dr. Iris Mauss is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on emotions and emotion regulation, with an emphasis on their links to psychological and physical health. In her research, she uses measures of emotion experience, behavior, and physiological responding, and combine laboratory, daily-diary, and longitudinal survey approaches. More»
#983 Vinod Goel - Reason and Less: Pursuing Food, Sex, and Politics

Aug 22, 2024

Dr. Vinod Goel is Professor in the Department of Psychology at York University. He is interested in understanding the cognitive, computational, and neural basis of rational decision-making and emotional processing in humans. He is the author of Reason and Less: Pursuing Food, Sex, and Politics. More»
#980 Geoff MacDonald: The Psychology of Single People

Aug 15, 2024

Dr. Geoff MacDonald is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. In general, his research focuses on issues of social connection and disconnection. One emerging theme of his lab’s work is the intersection of singlehood and sexuality. He is trying to understand what predicts well-being in singlehood. Some broader issues that interest Dr. MacDonald now include thinking about attachment theory in light of longitudinal findings on the relatively small role of childhood treatment in adult attachment security, the role of Big 5 personality traits in attraction and maintenance of relationships, and better understanding what people are doing psychologically when they let go of a close relationship. More»