Human Potential Lab

On this episode of The Psychology Podcast, physicist Sean Carroll chats with Scott Barry Kaufman, host of The Psychology Podcast, about his new book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, which is out today!

In this episode we discuss:

• Why studying humans is more complicated than studying the universe
• The importance of having humility as a psychologist
• How Scott’s new book Transcend builds on the work of Abraham Maslow
• How Maslow never actually drew a pyramid
• What Maslow actually meant by his “Hierarchy of Needs”
• The dialectical between security and growth
• Scott’s new metaphor for the hierarchy of needs
• How humans can be greater than the sum of their parts
• Scott’s revised integrated hierarchy of needs
• Why attachment styles are continuums, not types
• Why the need for belonging is not the same as the need for intimacy
• The effects of loneliness on our physical health
• The latest science of introversion
• Healthy self-esteem vs. narcissism
• The “growing tip”
• Psychological entropy
• The need for exploration and information seeking
• The more cosmic aspect of love, or “B-Love”
• The need for purpose
• Why self-actualization is not achievement
• The form of purpose that can lead to transcendence
• Why nothing is absolutely good or bad

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Today it’s great to have Dr. Seth Gillihan on the podcast. Dr. Gillihan is a licensed psychologist who has written and lectured nationally and internationally on cognitive behavioral therapy and the role of the brain in psychiatric conditions. His books include The CBT Deck, A Mindful Year: 365 Ways to Find Connection and the Sacred in Everyday Life (co-authored with Dr. Aria Campbell-Danesh), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Made Simple,and Retrain Your Brain: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks. Dr. Gillihan also blogs for Psychology Today and hosts the weekly Think Act Be podcast, which features a wide range of conversations about living more fully. He has a clinical practice in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, providing treatment to adults with insomnia, OCD, anxiety, depression, and related conditions.

Find Seth on the web at sethgillihan.com. See Seth’s CBT Deck here. See the Think Act Be online school where Seth offers courses in mindfulness-centered CBT for anxiety, stress, and worry here: https://think-act-be.teachable.com/.

In this episode we discuss:

• How Seth got into therapy 
• The second wave of CBT
• The behavioral activation approach
• Mindful CBT 
• Seth’s “Think Act Be” approach
• The importance of core beliefs
• The cheap form of self-love
• “Cycling the Puck”
• The importance of returning to the true center of ourselves
• The curious paradox of acceptance
• What is our deepest self?
• What is consciousness?
• Why waking up isn’t a once and for all experience
• How we can be kinder to ourselves

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“Life has to win every day, death only has to win once.” — Roy Baumeister

Today it’s great to have Roy Baumeister on the podcast. Dr. Baumeister is currently professor of psychology at the University of Queensland and is among the most prolific and most frequently cited psychologists in the world, with over 650 publications. His 40 books include the New York Times bestseller Willpower. His research covers self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, consciousness, free will, and self-presentation. In 2013 he received the William James award for lifetime achievement in psychological science (the Association for Psychological Science’s highest honor), and his latest book, co-authored with John Tierney, is called “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It”.

In this episode we discuss:

• How the human brain has a tendency to focus on the bad
• Why bad is processed more thoroughly than good
• The latest research on ego depletion 
• Roy’s take on the replication crisis
• Why falsely accused people have trouble repairing their reputation
• Why the bad gets so much more publicity than the good
• Early career researchers and the lack of incentive for exporation
• Why we are wired for bad
• The importance of the Pollyanna principle
• Roy’s words of wisdom for those with anxiety over the Coronavirus
• “The rule of 4”
• Why are hell fearing religions more popular than those preaching a benevolent message?
• Gordon Allport’s distinction between mature and immature religion
• The riskiness of drawing too much on the self
• Roy’s thoughts on the best route to the good life
• Ways we can see the bigger picture
• The “negative Golden Rule”
• How to get on the “low-bad diet”

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Today it’s great to have Max Lugavere on the podcast. Max is a filmmaker, health and science journalist and the author of the New York Times best-selling book Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life, which is now published in 8 languages around the globe. He is also the host of the #1 iTunes health podcast The Genius Life. Lugavere appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors. He has contributed to Medscape, Vice, Fast Company, CNN, and the Daily Beast, has been featured on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and in The Wall Street Journal. He is a sought-after speaker and has given talks at South by Southwest, TEDx, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm, Sweden, and many others. Max is excited to release his sophomore book, The Genius Life: Heal Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Become Extraordinary, a lifestyle guide to living happily and healthily with proven, research-based lifestyle tactics.

• What is “nutritional psychiatry”?
• The importance of preserving protein in your body
• How longevity and nutrition is a continually evolving science
• Environmental toxins that we are exposed to on a daily basis
• The influence of the environment on emotional instability
• The “three Ps” of detoxification
• The importance of consuming a “nutrient dense diet”
• The importance of sweating regularly 
• The potential of house plants to purify the air
• The dangers of tap water
• The dangers of consuming processed foods
• The importance of whole foods
• How to make your gym sessions more efficient
• How exercise is a form of medicine
• How the right tools in your toolkit can alleviate depression and anxiety
• The importance of taking a whole body approach

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Today it’s a real honor to have Carol Dweck on the podcast. Dr. Dweck is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research examines the role of mindsets in personal achievement and organizational effectiveness. 

Dr. Dweck has also held professorships at Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured to education, business, and sports groups around the world, has addressed the United Nations, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and has won 12 lifetime achievement awards for her research. Her best-selling book Mindset has been widely influential and has been translated into over 25 languages. 

In this episode we discuss:

• Carol’s earliest research on “incremental” vs. “entity” beliefs
• Carol’s dream of “bottling” the mindsets that lead people to persevere
• The limitations of Carol’s earlier studies 
• The two big developments in studying growth mindset
• Growth mindset exercises
• The “Big Mama” of growth mindset studies
• The underwhelming effect size of educational interventions
• How lower-achieving students benefit more from growth mindset interventions
• The conditions under which growth mindset interventions don’t work
• The role of teacher mindset on teaching effectiveness
• The relationship between growth mindset and other outcomes in life
• How growth mindset doesn’t invalidate the existence of giftedness
• Why every child should be challenged
• Why we shouldn’t cut out gifted and talented programs
• How praising gifted students for effort can backfire
• The relationship between mindsets and IQ
• How having a fixed mindset can sometimes lead to increased performance
• Cross-cultural differences in mindsets
• Criticism that growth mindset claims have been overblown
• Carol Dweck’s dream of improving the sustainability of growth mindset interventions (Dweck’s “next big Mount Everest”)
• Why mindset is not a “miracle maker”
• What Carol Dweck is most excited about in terms of future directions

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“There are very few people who have nothing of any value to say.” — Coleman Hughes

Today it’s great to have Coleman Hughes on the podcast. Coleman is an undergraduate philosophy major at Columbia University and a columnist for Quillette magazine. His writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, and the Spectator.

In this episode we discuss:

• Coleman’s initial plan in life to become a trombonist
• Coleman’s early childhood education
• Coleman’s transformation of his thinking about race
• Coleman’s nuanced thoughts on intersectionality
• Why we set up a norm against racial stereotyping
• Is reverse-racism legitimate?
• How the main message of the civil rights movement is often ignored today
• Coleman’s humanistic perspective on race
• Coleman’s criticism of the woke mindset
• What makes sense about the woke mindset
• Looking at things from the perspective of police officers
• Understanding the causes of the underrepresentation of African Americans in gifted education programs
• The moral imperative to enhance cognitive development of people in the bottom of society 
• How racial categories can mislead us
• How people underrate the value of local programs and community to solve problems of racism
• Why policy shouldn’t look at racial disparities
• The important distinction between culture and race
• Why focusing on racial disparities (assuming that racial disparities are a proxy for well-being) is a mistake
• Coleman’s vision for the good society

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Today it’s really great to have Nir Eyal on the podcast. Nir is formerly a Lecturer in Marketing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and also taught at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. His first book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, was an international bestseller. His current book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, reveals the Achilles’ heel of distraction and provides a guidebook for getting the best of technology without letting it get the best of us. Nir blogs at: NirAndFar.com

In this episode we discuss:

• The one superpower that Nir would want
• The root cause of distraction
• What really motivates us
• How distraction starts from within
• How time management is pain management
• What is the role of boredom in distractibility?
• How to raise indistractible kids
• How to remove the external trigger of kids
• The critical question that people should ask
• How can you prevent distraction with pacts?
• How we can use precommitments to keep ourselves focused
• How people overuse of the word “addiction”
• The stigmatization of ADHD
• Treating a kid’s use of technology the same way we think of a swimming pool
• How children are “hypocrisy detection devices”
• The importance of setting a good example for children
• Self-determination theory and the rise of cell phone use
• Can too much concentration, and too little daydreaming, be a bad thing?

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Today we’re excited to have Lori Gottlieb on the podcast. Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is being adapted as a television series with Eva Longoria. In addition to her clinical practice, she writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column and is the co-host of iHeart’s upcoming “Dear Therapists” podcast, produced by Katie Couric. She is also a TED speaker, a ​member of the Advisory Council for Bring Change to Mind, and advisor to the Aspen Institute. She is a sought-after expert in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show, CNN, and NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com or by following her @LoriGottlieb1 on Twitter.

In this episode we discuss:

• The fundamental themes of human existence
• Irvin Yalom’s influence on Lori Gottlieb
• Why we feel isolated in our experiences
• The loneliness crisis on college campuses
• How the internet helps us numb
• How to know when social media has become an addiction
• Why happiness as a goal is a disaster
• SBK analyzes Lori Gottlieb
• Why we are often scared to do things that excite us
• Why there is no “hierarchy of pain”
• The hierarchy of pain and the social justice movement
• Why is it so hard for us to change when we know what to do?
• Why we don’t let ourselves be happy
• The importance of self-compassion
• The most important factor in the success of therapy
• What makes for a boring patient?
• Why feelings sometimes don’t care about facts
• Common myths of therapy
• “Part of us wants something and there’s another part of us that goes against the thing we want”
• Why “our feelings need air”
• How numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings
• The importance of seeing your own agency and the choices you have

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/support

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“The only normal people are the people you don’t know very well.” — Jonathan Mooney

Today we have Jonathan Mooney on the podcast. Jonathan is a dyslexic writer and speaker who did not learn to read until 12 years old. He faced a number of low expectations growing up— was told he would flip burgers, be a high school drop out and end up in jail. Needless to say these prophecies didn’t come to pass. Today, he speaks across the nation about neurological and physical diversity, inspiring those who live with differences and advocating for change. Mooney’s work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, HBO, NPR, and ABC News, and his books include The Short Bus, Learning Outside the Lines, and most recently, Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive Outside the Lines. 

In this episode we discuss:

• What is normal?
• How the creation of special ed was originally an act of inclusion
• The unintended complications of creating a special education program
• Jonathan’s story growing up in special ed
• The twice-exceptional (2e) movement
• How giftedness comes with a “complicated brew” of assets and challenges
• The importance of recognizing the 2e within ourselves and sharing that with the world
• The importance of not hiding the things that make us different, but celebrating those things
• How Jonathan once took on many personas to hide his differences
• How the average got conflated with the impossible ideal in society
• The value judgement that is placed on IQ from a cultural perspective
• Going from “How smart are you?” to “How are you smart”?
• Jonathan feeling deficient because he was different
• How Jonathan went on a journey driving a school bus across the United States and listened to people with atypical brains and bodies
• The value of human fallibility
• The Eye to Eye mentoring program
• How the private sector corporate diversity policies can make difference by including atypical brains and bodies as part of diversity initiatives

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/support

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Today it's great to have Paul Bloom on the podcast. Dr. Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field. Dr. Bloom is also author or editor of seven books, including Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion 

In this wide-ranging and provocative episode we discuss:

• Paul's graduate research with Steven Pinker
• Is language the result of biological evolution or cultural evolution?
• What "hardwired" really means
• Why innate mechanisms require environmental input
• The necessity of bias
• Some potential downsides of empathy
• The case for rational compassion 
• Cognitive empathy vs. affective empathy 
• Did Hitler have the capacity for empathy? 
• The joy of suffering 
• Why do we choose to suffer?
• The fundamental human need for exploration
• The human need to overcome challenges
• Would some people be content watching Netflix and smoking pot all day?
• The relationship between income and happiness 
• The importance of spending money well
• The psychology of expectation and pleasure
• If someone offer you more money, should you take it?
• Relief vs. pleasure
• Does enjoying something depend on how much we think we will enjoy something?
• Art and authenticity 
• Art and value judgements
• Would Tarzan believe in God?
• Are babies basically good?
• Why religion is so pervasive
• Are babies moral?
• How a powerful moral sense is responsible for an extraordinary amount of evil in the world
• Is moral grandstanding always bad?
• Why not everything is virtue signaling

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/support

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