Is the “business-as-usual” approach to science in crisis? Does the public have a good grasp of how scientific knowledge is really generated? And might scientists be as much prey to self-serving biases as the rest of us mortals? Simine Vazire joins Igor and Charles to discuss the thorny complexity of seeking reliable knowledge about the world and about ourselves, the perils of being a whistleblower in the competitive world of modern science, and the on-going scientific credibility revolution. We discuss meta-scientists, the Open Science movement, and the power of preprints to bust open the black box of peer review. Igor tries to unpack the dialectic of motives among the ‘data policemen,’ Simine issues a call-to-arms for a grassroots-powered future for the scientific community, and Charles learns that the planet of self-knowledge is in a galaxy still far, far away. Welcome to Episode 25.

Special Guest: Simine Vazire.

Links:

• Simine Vazire
• Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong - Vox
• False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant - Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson, Uri Simonsohn, 2011
• Let’s Add Kindness to Science - Shira Gabriel - Medium
• The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science
• Psychology's Replication Crisis Is Real, Many Labs 2 Says - The Atlantic
• Daryl Bem proved ESP is real. Which means science is broken - Slate
• Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. - PubMed - NCBI
• Most Americans trust military, scientists to act in public interest | Pew Research Center
• The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study | The BMJ
• From Protoscience to Proper Science: The Path ahead for Psychology | Science | The Guardian
• Sometimes I'm Wrong: Flip Yourself - Part I - Simine Vazire Blog
• The Black Goat – A podcast about doing science
• Wisdom and Value Orientations: Just a Projection of Our Own Beliefs? - Glück, Schrottenbacher (2019)

Are people being reasonable when they act irrationally? Doesn’t rationality and reasonableness mean the same thing? Charles and Igor kick of the new decade by diving into a messy mix of behavioral economics, nudges, moral philosophy and legal studies, to examine what standards guide people’s decisions. Charles asks Igor about core standards that guide people when they try to make a good decision. Igor unpacks how the standard of a rational agent evolved in the 20th century and what implications it has had for modern economics and politics. Charles wonders if there are any reasonable people left on the Clapham omnibus in London. Igor discusses his new work assessing how most people define rationality and reasonableness, showing that irrational behavior may be a consequence of focusing on reasonableness instead. Welcome to Episode 24.

Links:

• Folk standards of sound judgment: Rationality Versus Reasonableness | Science Advances
• Public Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Neoliberalism - Wikipedia
• The Hedgehog and the Fox | Princeton University Press
• Nudge : Richard H. Thaler & Cass Sunstein
• Self-Interest, Sacrifice, and Climate Change: (Re-)Framing the British Columbia Carbon Tax - MIT Press Scholarship

Does that which doesn’t kill you make you weaker? Should we always follow our emotions? Is life a battle between good people and bad people? And critically, what might the adoption of these three popular, but unwise, ideas be doing to a rising generation of young adults? Jonathan Haidt joins Igor and Charles to discuss the three great untruths of modern life, the nature of antifragility, the 'great awokening,' rising violence on US university campuses, and the origin story of the Heterodox Academy. Igor suggests that diversity can help some projects while hindering others, Jon shares his ultimate conflict-resolving ninja skill, and Charles learns that conservative voters come in radically different shapes and sizes. Welcome to Episode 23.

Special Guest: Jonathan Haidt.

Links:

• Jon Haidt's Home Page
• Heterodox Academy
• The Coddling of the American Mind
• Jonathan Haidt: Can a divided America heal? | TED Talk
• A Conflict of Visions - Thomas Sowell
• How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
• More in Common - Publications - The Perception Gap / Hidden Tribes
• Reparations, systemic racism, and white Democrats’ new racial liberalism (On the Great Awokening) - Vox
• The Authoritarian Dynamic - Karen Stenner
• E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century - Robert D. Putnam
• The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment - Haidt (2001)
• The Coddling of the American Mind - International Coddling
• World Happiness Report 2019 - Chapter 5: The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media - Jean M. Twenge
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science: Amazon.co.uk: Jonathan Haidt: 8601300074849: Books
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion: Amazon.co.uk: Jonathan Haidt: 0884607571077: Books

Patients always receive treatment in agreement with the best scientific evidence available, right? Well, no. Not really. Clinical practitioners seem to suffer from many of the cognitive biases that affect the rest of us, and treatment decisions are often much less science-based that we might like to think. Scott Lilienfeld joins Igor and Charles to discuss evidence-based practice in psychotherapy, the importance of doubting, clinical psychology’s dirty little secret, Scarlett Johansson’s brain, confirmation bias, how science really works, and why people just can’t let go of the idea that a full moon triggers werewolf-style behaviour. Igor reveals he learnt his English from TV detective ‘Columbo’, Scott discusses the fine art of planting seeds of doubt in conversations, and Charles learns from Abraham Lincoln that intellectual humility can ultimately be a path to earned intellectual confidence. Welcome to Episode 22.

Special Guest: Scott Lilienfeld.

Links:

• The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others - Emily Pronin, Daniel Y. Lin, Lee Ross, 2002
• The Psychology of Intellectual Humility - Leary
• Are Self-Report Cognitive Empathy Ratings Valid Proxies for Cognitive Empathy Ability? Negligible Meta-Analytic Relations With Behavioral Task Performance - Murphy & Lilienfeld (2019)
• Evidence-Based Practice: The Misunderstandings Continue | Psychology Today
• Epistemic Humility: An Overarching Educational Philosophy for Clinical Psychology Programs - Lilienfeld, Lynn, O'Donohue, Latzman (2017)
• Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong - Vox
• 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior | Introduction to Psychology | Psychology | Subjects | Wiley
• Frontiers | Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases | Psychology
• Lucy TRAILER 1 (2014) - Luc Besson, Scarlett Johansson Movie HD - YouTube
• Elizabeth F. Loftus – UCI School of Social Ecology
• Scott Lilienfeld: The Search for Successful Psychopathy - YouTube
• Evidence at Emory - Psychology - YouTube
• Bright Scientists, Dim Notions - The New York Times (2007)

We live in confusing times. Politics is polarizing. Opinions clash on many topics leading to heated discussions. Take environmental change and what to do about it, the best ways to achieve prosperity, or the threats and opportunities of our globalized economy. Are we ready to admit that we often actually don’t understand what’s going on? Mark Alfano joins Igor and Charles to discuss the importance of ‘intellectual humility’ when seeking a more accurate grasp of reality, the perils of poorly designed virtue education programmes, Nietzsche and his take on the intellectual virtues, and the training of machine-learning algorithms to mine our digital footprints for signs of virtuous behaviour. Igor raises concerns that embracing uncertainty may hobble vital action, Mark talks of the dangers of creaking open your social media newsfeed too wide, and Charles learns that fostering contempt for oneself and one’s group may be essential on the path to truth. Welcome to Episode 21.

Special Guest: Mark Alfano.

Links:

• Mark Alfano's Website
• I Know You Are, But What Am I?: Anti-Individualism in the Development of Intellectual Humility and Wu-Wei - Robinson & Alfano (2016)
• Nietzsche's Moral Psychology : Mark Alfano (author) : 9781107074156 : Blackwell's
• Development and validation of a multidimensional measure of intellectual humility - Alfano et al (2017)
• A cross-cultural assessment of the semantic dimensions of intellectual humility - Christen, Alfano, Robinson (2017)
• How ‘Intellectual Humility’ Can Make You a Better Person -- Science of Us
• Wisdom in Context - Igor Grossmann (2017)
• The Strengths of Wisdom Provide Unique Contributions to Improved Leadership, Sustainability, Inequality, Gross National Happiness, and Civic Discourse in the Face of Contemporary World Problems - Grossmann & Brienza (2018)
• Wisdom, bias, and balance: Toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition - Brienza, Kung, Santos, Bobocel, Grossmann (2018) — Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/p25c2
• Situation-Based Contingencies Underlying Wisdom-Content Manifestations: Examining Intellectual Humility in Daily Life | The Journals of Gerontology: Series B | Oxford Academic - Zachry, Phan, Blackie, Jayawickreme (2018)
• Constructing and Validating a Scale of Intellectual Humility @ The Intellectual Humility Capstone Conference (2015) - YouTube
• Online Personalization Creates Echo Chamber to Affirm Biases - The New York Times
• Alessandra Tanesini – Philosopher, Sailor, Wine buff
• The Puzzle of Humility and Disparity (2020) | Daniel Howard-Snyder, Dennis Whitcomb, and Heather Battaly - (2020)

What exactly is ‘awe’ and does it bring us, as individuals or as a society, any benefit? Dacher Keltner joins Igor and Charles to discuss why Canadians feel differently about awe than the Chinese, how to take an ‘awe walk’, why emotions vary across historical time, and the importance of experiencing diverse emotions and how to balance them, while the 'Dacher-Guesses-Emotions' game reveals the alarmingly fine line between disgust and desire. Igor digs into controversies over different theories of emotion, Dacher talks of inequality and elation as the new frontiers of social psychology, and Charles learns that awe may play a key role in the very process of scientific discovery itself. Welcome to Episode 20.

Special Guest: Dacher Keltner.

Links:

• Dacher Keltner | UC Psych
• Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life
• Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory
• Mapping Emotion - Alan Cowen
• Dacher Keltner: Why Awe Is Such an Important Emotion - YouTube
• The Science of Happiness Podcast | Greater Good
• Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion - Keltner & Haidt (2003)
• Awe and Scientific Explanation - Valdesolo, Park & Gottlieb (2016)
• Awe as a scientific emotion - Gottlieb, Keltner, Lombrozo (2018)
• Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior - PIff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato, Keltner (2015)
• Awe and humility. - PubMed - NCBI - Stellar, gordon, Anderson, Piff, McNeil, Keltner (2018)
• Awe in nature heals: Evidence from military veterans, at-risk youth, and college students. - PsycNET - Anderson, Monroy, Keltner (2018)
• Emotional complexity: Clarifying definitions and cultural correlates. - PsycNET - Grossmann, Huynh, Ellsworth (2016)
• Wise reasoning benefits from emodiversity, irrespective of emotional intensity. - PsycNET - Grossmann, Oakes, Santos (2019)
• TEDxBerkeley (On Compassion) - Dacher Keltner
• An Awe Walk in Muir Woods - Mindful
• Why Do We Feel Awe? | Greater Good
• Exploring the powerful emotion of awe: How it can be awe-some and aw-ful | CBC Radio
• Jennifer Stellar: How Culture Shapes the Experience of Awe - YouTube
• Lani Shiota: How Awe Transforms the Body and Mind - YouTube
• Patterns of Cognitive Appraisal in Emotion - Smith & Ellsworth
• The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence: Dacher Keltner: 9781594205248: Amazon.com: Books
• Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life: Dacher Keltner: 8601401183044: Amazon.com: Books
• The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness: Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh, Jeremy Adam Smith: 9780393337280: Amazon.com: Books

Can an individual really change a culture? Adam Grant joins Igor and Charles to discuss cultures of non-conformity and giving in the workplace, the perils of cognitive entrenchment, the critical role of culture carriers, and why we should be managing our attention rather than our time. Igor delights in learning of the astoundingly high frequency of dancers among Nobel prize winners, Adam suggests that moral arguments still trump bottom-line arguments in the boardroom, and Charles learns that the secret route to culture-change might be found in asking your boss for advice. Welcome to Episode 19.

Special Guest: Adam Grant.

Links:

• Adam Grant | Books, Podcast, TED Talks, Newsletter, Articles
• Are you a giver or a taker? | Adam Grant - TED Talk
• The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant - TED Talk
• Adam Grant - The New York Times Column
• In the Company of Givers and Takers - Harvard Business Review
• WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED podcast

How did politics get so damn polarised? Jay Van Bavel joins Igor and Charles to discuss political polarisation, the partisan brain, the inexorable rise of superheroes in dark times, the misperceptions of polarisation levels, and how to reach out to other tribes. Igor highlights the partisanship-transcending benefits of a Watchmen-style alien invasion, Jay proposes the judicious use of ‘off-ramps’ when engaging with loved-ones from across the political divide, and Charles learns that even the abstract purity of Mathematics is not immune from the tentacles of partisanship when guns are involved. Welcome to Episode 18.

Special Guest: Jay Van Bavel.

Links:

• Social Perception and Evaluation Lab
• The dangers of the partisan brain | Jay Van Bavel | TEDxSkoll - YouTube
• The Partisan Brain: An Identity-Based Model of Political Belief - ScienceDirect
• Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks - Brady, Wills, Jost, Tucker and Van Bavel (2016)
• An Ideological Asymmetry in the Diffusion of Moralized Content on Social Media Among Political Leaders - Brady, Wills, Burkart, Jost, Van Bavel (2018)
• How to go viral: stick to your morals but add a hint of emotion | WIRED UK
• What Brexit can teach us about the psychology of fear - Vox
• Letters to Young Scientists | Science | AAAS

Our current productivity culture appears to peddle a false promise: If we can just get better organised, we really can do everything - no tough life choices or trade-offs need to be made! Guardian journalist and author Oliver Burkeman joins Igor and Charles to discuss the ironic effects of the pursuit of productivity, the inbox zero phenomenon, the futile denial of limitations, the Jevons paradox, Keynes’ concerns about a future society drowning in leisure time, Nietzsche’s suspicions regarding our beloved busyness, the social complexities of sending back a poorly made coffee, and the importance of living a life that is larger than politics. Igor wonders if the ‘slow-food’ philosophy can be extended to start a ‘slow-work’ movement in social and medical sciences to help address replication concerns, Oliver explains why he sat on the London underground loudly calling out the names of approaching stations to a carriage full of strangers, and Charles reveals how a ‘free-coffees-for-nice-customers’ policy can badly backfire, particularly if your customers are British. Welcome to Episode 17.

Special Guest: Oliver Burkeman.

Links:

• Oliver Burkeman | The Guardian
• Oliver Burkeman | The Antidote
• Oliver Burkeman: The Negative Path to Happiness and Success - YouTube
• Supressing the 'white bears' (American Psychological Association) - Daniel Wegner's Theory of 'Ironic Processes'
• Why time management is ruining our lives | Oliver Burkeman | Technology | The Guardian
• How to stop fighting against time. | Oliver Burkeman | TEDxUniversityofNicosia - YouTube
• Inbox Zero: What is Inbox Zero and is Zero Inbox Possible in 2019?
• The Efficiency Dilemma | The New Yorker (The Jevons Paradox)
• How the news took over reality | News | The Guardian
• Robert B. Talisse | Philosophy Department | Vanderbilt University

Do highly intelligent people actually take better decisions in their daily lives than everyone else? And if not, what’s missing from our picture of what it means to be ‘smart’? Can you be highly intelligent, yet flunk a rationality test? And rather than noise to be ignored, might our emotions help us make decisions that are actually more rational? David Robson joins Igor and Charles to discuss intelligence traps, Terman’s Termites, the Monte Carlo fallacy, Damasio’s Somatic Marker hypothesis, the competitive humility of the start-up culture, and the ‘brutal pessimism’ baked in to the dark history of the Intelligence test. Igor wrangles with the challenge of convincing leaders of the merits of intellectual humility in a culture obsessed with certainty, David advocates for widespread cognitive inoculations, and Charles learns that butterflies in the stomach after a date may mean love, but also may mean gastric flu. Welcome to Episode 16.

Special Guest: David Robson.

Links:

• David Robson – Exploring the human brain, body and behaviour.
• The Intelligence Trap – David Robson
• Intelligence — Robert J. Sternberg
• Alfred Binet and the History of IQ Testing
• The Vexing Legacy of Lewis Terman | STANFORD magazine
• Five Minutes with Keith E. Stanovich, Richard F. West, and Maggie E. Toplak | The MIT Press
• Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss - Scientific American
• The Somatic Marker Hypothesis and the Possible Functions of the Prefrontal Cortex: Damasio, Everitt and Bishop (1996)
• Emotional intelligence and how emotions are 'made' | WIRED UK
• Can We Improve Predictions? Q&A with Philip "Superforecasting" Tetlock - Scientific American Blog Network
• The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
• The Fine Art of Baloney Detection: Carl Sagan
• Exploring Solomon’s Paradox: Self-Distancing Eliminates the Self-Other Asymmetry in Wise Reasoning About Close Relationships in Younger and Older Adults - Igor Grossmann, Ethan Kross, 2014