Anjie chats with Dr. Nicholas Coles. Nicholas is a Research Scientist at Stanford University, the co-director of the Stanford Big Team Science Lab, and the Director of the Psychological Science Accelerator. He conducts research in affective science, cross-cultural psychology, and meta-science.

In affective science, Nicholas seeks to understand the social, cognitive, and physiological processes that underlie emotion. Much of his research here has focused on the facial feedback hypothesis, the idea that sensorimotor feedback from facial expressions can impact emotional processes (e.g., that smiling can make people feel happy). In meta-science, Nicholas works on building research infrastructure that allows researchers to more efficiently obtain knowledge about psychological phenomenon. In this domain, he directs the Psychological Science Accelerator: a globally distributed consortium of researchers who pool intellectual and material resources to accelerate the accumulation of generalizable knowledge in psychology.

In this episode, Anjie and Nicholas chat about a recent comment piece in Nature titled "Build up big team science".  They take a deep dive into an emerging trend in psychology – research done by a lot of people across a lot of labs. Nicholas shares the challenges, along with the promises of big team science.

You can read the comment we discussed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00150-2%0D?error=server_error
To learn more about Nicholas's research, you can visit his website: https://nicholas-coles.netlify.app/
Or you can also follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/coles_nicholas_
To learn more about PSA, here's the link to its website: https://psysciacc.org/ 

In this episode, Eric chats with Dave about trust. Who do we trust? How accurate are we in assessing another’s trustworthiness? Why do we sometimes trust people we think to be selfish? Why do we distrust people who are actually kind? What does trust have to do with respect? Is our kindness actually driven be negative, not positive emotions? Finally, Dave shares how to find a research idea worth pursuing and gives general advice for young academics curious about a career in psychology.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Dave's paper on trust
Dave's paper on respect
Dave's Twitter @daviddunning6

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Joseph chats with Dr. Marlone Henderson about how people think about the burdens and benefits of giving time to charity. They also talk about people’s moral evaluations of volunteering and how journal guidelines may incentivize production of theoretical versus practical research. Dr. Henderson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. His research aims at understanding the role that basic cognitive processes play in promoting social harmony in the domains of social conflict, social judgment and prosocial behavior.

To learn more about Dr. Henderson’s research, you can visit his profile here https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology/faculty/profile.php?eid=mdh2449

You can find the paper we discussed here:

Henderson, M. D., Jung, H., M Baker, E., & Wakslak, C. J. (2021). Anticipated effort and morality of segregated versus aggregated volunteering. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 34(5), 611-624

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Anjie chats with Dr. Tiffany N. Brannon, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. She directs Culture and Contact Lab. Her research examines socio-cultural identities in negatively stereotyped groups such as African-Americans and Latino-Americans; and she investigates the potential for these identities to serve as a psychological resource— one that can facilitate a variety of individual and intergroup benefits. In this episode, we discuss her recent article titled “Pride and Prejudice” Pathways to Belonging: Implications for Inclusive Diversity Practices Within Mainstream Institution”. We also chat about what insights qualitative methods could bring us.
 
You can check out the paper we discussed here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-58577-001
To learn more about Dr. Brannon’s research, you can visit her lab’s website: https://ccl.psych.ucla.edu/

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Joseph chats with Dr. Lasana Harris about how using traits rather than stereotypes when thinking about strangers can help combat social bias. They also address questions like when is it useful to make a situational versus a dispositional attribution, what are the differences between social and personality psychology, and some advice for academics entering psychology.

Dr. Harris is a Professor of Social Neuroscience in Experimental Psychology at University College London. He got his undergraduate degree from Howard University and his phD from Princeton University. His research uses a social neuroscience approach to explore the neural correlates of person perception, prejudice, dehumanization, anthropomorphism, social learning, social emotions, empathy, and punishment. He published a book in 2017 titled Invisible Mind: Flexible Social Cognition and Dehumanization. 

Paper link: Harris, L. T. (2021). Leveraging cultural narratives to promote trait inferences rather than stereotype activation during person perception. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(6), e12598

Dr. Harris’ personal website: https://lt-harris.info/

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Bella chats with Dr. Henrike (Henny) Moll.

Henny is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, where she directs the Minds in Development lab. Henny's primary research focus lies in children's understanding of perspectives and their ability to engage in joint attention. She studies how infants and young children come to understand the world and the role that others play in introducing them to the world. Her studies are informed by insights from philosophy of mind, education, and anthropology.

In this episode, we discussed Henny's research on theory of mind, young children's perspective taking, especially when other people's beliefs clash with their own beliefs or with reality, and how the concept of experiential record plays an important role in children's ability to understand other people's beliefs. Henny also shared the lab's future directions and some exciting upcoming projects. 

Henny's website: https://dornsife.usc.edu/labs/mid-la/

*We are currently conducting a survey to get to know our listeners better and to collect any feedback and suggestions so we can improve our podcast. If you have 1 minute, please click the link here to submit your anonymous response: https://forms.gle/dzHqnWTptW8pSVwMA. Thank you for your time and support!

Joseph speaks with Prof. Anuj Shah about a lab experiment on social perceptions, in particular how when we learn a few details about a stranger, we seem to feel like they know and understand us too. They also talk about a field experiment in the New York City housing developments which affected social perceptions and was linked to lower rates of crime after people were provided with some details about neighborhood police officers. 

Anuj is an associate professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. His research uses psychology and behavioral science to examine social issues such as poverty, youth violence, and crime.

Shah, A. K., & LaForest, M. (2022). Knowledge about others reduces one’s own sense of anonymity. Nature, 603(7900), 297-301.

Anuj’s personal website: http://theslab.uchicago.edu/anuj/
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Eric chats with Vanessa Bohns, social psychologist and Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University. Vanessa studies how people influence one another, and how they can underestimate how much influence they really have. Vanessa has been a Visiting Scholar at the NYU Stern School of Business and has taught at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.

In this episode, Eric and Vanessa chat about Vanessa’s first book You Have More Influence Than You Think, published in September 2021. Vanessa discusses why people are often blind to how much of an impact they have on others. Are there occasions where people overestimate their influence? Does influence come with responsibility? Are there gender effects? Vanessa also mentions her related line of research on underestimating the kindness of strangers. Why are people often kinder than we expect? Finally, Vanessa shares her experience with writing a book as an academic and gives advice for others who consider writing a book.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Vanessa's book
Vanessa's Twitter @profbohns

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Joseph and Ashley talk about how infants, toddlers and children think about social relationships, how they track who is connected and how they are connected, what we can learn about children from studying animal behavior, and how children in other cultures might think differently about social relationships.

Dr. Ashley Thomas is a postdoctoral researcher in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT). She is interested in what infants, toddlers and children think and feel about social relationships and social intimacy. She also investigates adults moral judgments and asks questions like where do moral norms come from and how do they change? Ashley is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Research on Open and Equitable Scholarship at MIT.

The fantastic Science paper that was referenced: Thomas, A. J., Woo, B., Nettle, D., Spelke, E., & Saxe, R. (2022). Early concepts of intimacy: young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships. Science, 375(6578), 311-315

To learn more about Ashley's research please visit her personal website and her lab's website.

Her twitter handle is @AshleyJ_Thomas

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Eric chats with Robert Rosenthal, Professor of Psychology at University of California Riverside. Bob is the former Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard. Bob has gained worldwide fame for his work on self-fulfilling prophecies: “When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.”

Over 50 years ago, Bob introduced the Pygmalion Effect many psychology students now read about in their textbooks: when teachers expect certain students to be smart, those students actually become smarter. In this episode, Eric asks Bob about the current state of the evidence around the Pygmalion Effect. Bob discloses that he only started his work on self-fulfilling prophecies because of accidental analyses in his work. Bob relates his work to growth mindsets and speculates about self-fulfilling prophecies when judging another’s moral character.

He also discusses what is now called the Rosenthal Effect: experimenters’ expectations of their studies can influence the actual study outcomes. What methodological and statistical advances in psychology is he excited about? What does he think of the current reproducibility crisis? Are we misunderstanding meta-analyses? Finally, Bob shares advice for young scientists and ends with a forceful appeal to the beauty and privilege of learning about psychology.

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

One of Bob's papers on the Pygmalion Effect

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]