Stanford Psychology Podcast

Kate chats with Claudia Haase, Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Claudia’s research examines pathways towards happy and healthy development across the life span with a particular focus on emotions and emotion regulation. In this episode, Claudia shares insights from her work on romantic couples and how they navigate the emotional ups and downs o...

Bella chats with Prof. Axel Cleeremans, professor of Cognitive Science and research director with the National Fund for Scientific Research at the Free University of Brussels. He directs the Center for Research in Cognition & Neuroscience and leads the Consciousness, Cognition and Computation Group. He is also the field chief editor at the Frontiers in Psychology journal, which by far has the...

Kate chats with Kateri McRae, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Denver and the director of the Automaticity, Affect, Control & Thought Lab. Kateri's work focuses on  emotion, cognition, and the interplay between them. In this episode, Kateri shares insights from her recently published quantitative case study of specific phobia for clothing buttons. Kateri also discuss...

Bella chats with Prof. Dave Lagnado, a professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences in the Department of Experimental Psychology at UCL. Dave's research focuses on how people use causal models to draw inferences and make decisions. He has written over 100 articles and co-authored a textbook on the psychology of decision making. He has worked with US intelligence, the UK government and various...

Marianne and Eric chat with Professor Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham. Richard is author most recently of the book The Inner Level, and co-founder of The Equality Trust. In this episode, Richard shares his research on the detrimental and wide-ranging psychological effects of income inequality. He discusses how inequality impoverishes eve...

Joseph chats with Brian Nosek, co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science . The Center's mission is to increase the openness, integrity and reproducibility of scientific research. Brian is also a professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia where he runs the Implicit Social Cognition Lab. Brian studies the gap between values and practices with the goal of unders...

Eric chats with Paul Rozin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Paul is one of the world’s leading experts in a variety of fields, ranging from cultural to moral to social psychology. He has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of the American Psych...

In this episode, Natalia, a former CSLI intern, chats with Erica Yoon, the teaching coordinator for the CSLI Summer Internship Program. Along with hearing from other former interns, they go over the structure and overarching goals of the program, and how it fits into the overall mission of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). Erica is particularly excited about attracting d...

Eric chats with Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection. She is the best-selling author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress. Her TED talk, "How to Make Stress Your Friend," is one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, with over 27 million views. Kelly’s latest book, The Joy of Movement, e...

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 recent study examining the effects of brief emotion regulation interventions during the COVID-19 pa...

Eric chats with Jillian Jordan, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Jillian’s work has focused on human morality and the role that reputation plays in shaping cooperative behavior. Her fascinating research has integrated methods from psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary game theory and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Was...

In this episode, Anjie chats with Dr. Michal Strahilevitz. Michal is currently a marketing professor at Saint Mary’s College of California. Her research focuses on how emotions affect decision-making in a variety of contexts. In addition to being an enthusiastic researcher, Michal is an amazing teacher. She has won teaching awards from three different universities. blogs for Psychology Today and i...

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 the one hand and individuals with psychopathy on the other. She is the former President of the Social a...

Eric chats with Scott Barry Kaufman, cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist renowned for a series of groundbreaking books such as Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, Wired to Create, and, most recently, Transcend. Scott is founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential and has taught various classes at universities such as Columbia, Yale, NYU, and the University of Pe...

Eric chats with Erin Westgate, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida. The work from Erin’s lab has focused on topics such as thinking for pleasure and boredom and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC. Erin has famously found that people would rather shock themselves than sit alone with their thoughts for a few minutes! In this episode,...

Eric chats with Robert Sapolsky, Stanford Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery. Robert is a world-renowned academic and author of highly successful books such as A Primate’s Memoir, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. His Stanford lectures were among the first to be made available online across the entire university and have been watch...

In this episode, Anjie chats with Alison Gopnik, Professor at the Department of Psychology and Affiliate Professor at Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. Alison is not only a great cognitive scientist and philosopher who has made many groundbreaking contributions to the field, but also a great science communicator. Alison authored multiple bestselling books, including The Scientist in the Cri...

Eric chats with Wade Davis, Professor of Anthropology at UBC. Wade has a fantastically diverse background: Next to being a prolific academic with 22 published books, he was also a long-time Explorer-In-Residence at the National Geographic Society, taking him to what seems like every country on this planet. He is a professional photographer and has produced 18 documentary films based on his travels...

Eric chats with Tobias Gerstenberg, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford where he runs the Causality in Cognition Lab. His lab focuses on the cognitive processes involved in causal judgments: How are physical events caused? How do we use counterfactual thinking to attribute causation? In this episode, Tobi talks about his recent paper summarizing these lines of research. In the second hal...

For this week’s episode, we planned something special. Each year, the Stanford psychology department hosts Paths to Ph. D., a free, open-to-public information session on how to apply to Ph. D. programs and research positions in psychology. This year’s event is scheduled on Saturday, October 16th from 10:00 am-5:00 pm and the application deadline is on September 17th . In this episode, we invited L...

In this episode, Anjie chats with Hyo Gweon, an associate professor at Stanford Psychology Department. Hyo directs Social Learning Lab, where the research focus is our abilities to learn from others and teach others.  In this episode, she will share with us a very recent review article that came out on Trends in Cognitive Sciences titled "Inferential social learning: Cognitive foundations of...

Eric chats with Alan Fiske, Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. Alan is the author of multiple books, including Structures of Social Life and Virtuous Violence. Alan discusses why labeling emotions can often lead us to misunderstand our emotions. He then makes the case for a new emotion: Kama Muta, or “being moved, touched, stirred, having a rapturous experience, or tender fee...

In this episode, Anjie chats with Judy Fan, Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego. Judy’s research is at the intersection of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, she discusses a new line of research in her lab exploring how people learn about objects by trying to build them from scratch. She and her team recruited peo...

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 new...

In this episode,  Anjie chats with Deon Benton, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College.  He directs the Causality, Mind, and Computational Modeling Lab. Deon 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 th...