Bella chats with professor Laura Schulz. Laura is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT. She is also the director and principal investigator of the Early Childhood Cognition Lab. Laura’s research focuses on understanding the infrastructure of human cognition and how it’s constructed during early childhood. For example, Laura and her lab study children’s causal reasoning, social cognition, emotion understanding, and the connection between play and...
May 09, 2025•1 hr
This week, Misha chats with Robert Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. Robert directs the Social Interaction Lab where he studies the cognitive mechanisms that enable human communication and collaboration. His interdisciplinary work combines interactive experiments with computational models to uncover how people flexibly coordinate with one another. In this episode, we discuss his recent paper on communication in reference games, exploring how lexical search and s...
Apr 24, 2025•50 min
In this episode, Elizabeth chats with Dr. Kendrick Kay, an Associate Professor in Radiology at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He directs the Computational Visual Neuroscience Laboratory, and aims to understand brain function by combining cognitive neuroscience, functional MRI methods, and computational neuroscience. In this episode, Kendrick shares his work on the groundbreaking Natural Scene Dataset and discusses the behind-the-scenes considerations that went into its creation. He also o...
Apr 10, 2025•38 min•Ep. 150
This week, Enna chats with Dr. Jenna Wells, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Jenna’s research examines how emotion in close relationships contributes to mental and physical health over the life course, with a focus on late life. She is particularly interested in positive interpersonal processes and their associations with long-term health and well-being in individuals and dyads. In our conversation, Jenna shares her journey from aspiring therapist to emotion res...
Mar 27, 2025•53 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Dorsa Amir, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. She directs the Mind and Culture Lab, where she studies how culture shapes the developing mind. In this episode, Dorsa shares her papers that probe the many ways cultural environments can influence cognitive processes. She outlines a new framework proposing four possible “pathways” by which culture might (or might not) shape cognition. She also shares her own path into cultural psychology, ...
Feb 27, 2025•36 min
Eric chats with 2024 Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Stanford Professor Jay McClelland, two pioneers who have spent nearly half a century laying the groundwork for modern-day AI, advancing research on neural networks long before it captured the world's imagination. In fact, their early work faced significant skepticism from the scientific community - an experience they candidly discuss in this episode. This wide-ranging conversation covers everything from the capabilities of recent break...
Feb 13, 2025•48 min
This week, Misha chats with Dr. Alex Shaw, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago's Department of Psychology. His research explores how children and adults navigate the complex world of social behavior, with a particular focus on morality, fairness, and social judgments. In this episode, Dr. Shaw discusses his fascinating research on why attempts to stay neutral in moral and political disagreements can sometimes backfire. His work reveals that when people choose not to take sides ...
Jan 30, 2025•51 min
Marginalia Episode is a collaboration between the Stanford Psychology Podcast and Marginalia Science. Marginalia Science is a community committed to promoting work of scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in academia. Their mission really resonated with our values at the Stanford Psychology Podcast. In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this episode, Enna chats with Professor Erica Bailey at UC Berkeley Haa...
Jan 17, 2025•50 min
Eric chats with Sandra Matz, Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Sandra is a renowned computational social scientist, using AI and big data to study human behavior and preferences. Sandra was named as one of the Poets & Quants 40 under 40 Business School Professors in 2021. In this episode, Eric and Sandra discuss Sandra’s new book “Mindmasters” on how companies and academics are using AI to predict and shape people’s personalities. They discuss how to align AI with ...
Jan 09, 2025•54 min
This week, Enna chats with Dr. Casey Kenyon Brown, Professor at Georgetown University in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the prestigious Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Aging and the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science. Casey’s research examines how we share, understand, and influence one another’s emotions. She’s interested in how these...
Dec 05, 2024•40 min
Adani chats with Kate Petrova, one of the first hosts of the Stanford Psychology Podcast and a fourth-year Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University. In this special episode from our Meet the Host series, Kate shares her journey into research and science communication, and how she grappled with the ups and downs of graduate school! She also discusses the value and challenges of interdisciplinarity, what affective science is and could look like in the future, and what most excites her ab...
Nov 22, 2024•51 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Michael Schwalbe and Dr. Geoff Cohen. Michael is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, from which he also received his PhD in social psychology. Geoff is a Professor of Psychology and the James G. March Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business at Stanford University. His research examines the processes that shape people’s sense of belonging and self-concept, and the role that these processes play in various social problems. In this episode, Micha...
Nov 07, 2024•37 min
Adani chats with Dr. Julia Chatain, Senior Scientist at the Singapore-ETH Centre of ETH Zürich. Julia is a computer scientist and learning scientist responsible for building a new research program, “Future Embodied Learning Technologies” (FELT), focusing on exploring AI-powered embodied learning interventions to support low-progress learners and learners with special needs, both at the cognitive and the affective levels. Before that, she led the EduTech group at ETH Zürich, conducting Research a...
Oct 25, 2024•38 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Susan Carey. Susan is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and one of the most influential figures in the field of developmental psychology. Her groundbreaking research focuses on conceptual change and how knowledge systems develop throughout childhood. Susan has received numerous prestigious awards, including the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the David Rumelhart Prize for significant contributions to human co...
Oct 10, 2024•43 min
This week, Enna chats with Dr. Hal Hershfield, Professor of Marketing, Behavioral Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA Anderson School of Management. In 2017, Hal was recognized as a 40 under 40 best business school professor. This year, he was voted as faculty of the year by MBA students at UCLA. Hal studies how thinking about time transforms the emotions and alters the judgments and decisions people make. His research concentrates on the psychology of long-term decision making and how time ...
Sep 26, 2024•38 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Kelsey Lucca. Kelsey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She directs the Emerging Minds Lab, where she leads her team to investigate cognitive development during infancy and early childhood, with a focus on the development of curiosity, social cognition, communication, and problem solving. In this episode, Kelsey chats about one of her recent papers “Developmental differences in children and adults’ enforcement of explore ve...
Jul 26, 2024•37 min
Anjie chats with Bella Fascendini, a long time host of the Stanford Psychology Podcast and an incoming Ph.D. student in psychology at Princeton University. In this special episode from our Meet the Host series, Bella shares her journey into cognitive science and science communication, offering valuable tips for those considering graduate school or pursuing science communication. She also discusses one of her coolest work experiences —working with Penguin—and how it has shaped her current path. I...
Jul 11, 2024•32 min
Joseph chats with Prof. Jake Quilty-Dunn, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Cognitive Science Rutgers University. Prof. Quilty-Dunn works primarily in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Much of his research concerns distinctions between kinds of mental representations (such as iconic and discursive formats), mental processes (such as inference and association), and mental systems (such as perception and cognition). He also has broad resea...
Jun 28, 2024•48 min
Joseph and Dr. Lisa Damour discuss the portrayal of teenage emotions in Pixar's "Inside Out 2", with a focus on anxiety. Dr. Damour, who consulted for the film as a clinical psychologist, shares her experience, the teenage emotions explored in the film, how scientific insights are integrated into the story, and the societal issues it addresses. Dr Damour is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Untangled, Under Pressure, and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, which have ...
Jun 14, 2024•35 min
Joseph chats with Prof. Nicholas Shea, Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London and associate member of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. Prof. Shea is an interdisciplinary philosopher of mind and cognitive science, and has published work on mental representation, inheritance systems, consciousness, AI, and the metaphysics of mind. In this episode Joseph and Prof. Shea chat about two ways of thinking about concepts in human adults, babies, non-h...
Jun 07, 2024•42 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Nilam Ram. Nilam is a Professor of Communications & Psychology at Stanford University, and he studies how short-term changes develop across the life span and how longitudinal study designs contribute to the generation of new knowledge. Nilam is developing a variety of study paradigms that use recent developments in data science and the intensive data streams arriving from social media, mobile sensors, and smartphones to study behavioral change at multiple time scales. In...
May 23, 2024•37 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Johannes Eichstaedt, an Assistant Professor in Psychology, and the Shriram Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University. Johannes directs the Computational Psychology and Well-Being lab. His research focuses on using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, …) to measure the psychological states of large populations and individuals to determine the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that drive physical illness (like heart d...
Apr 25, 2024•47 min
Anjie chats with Dr. Laura Gwilliams. Laura is an assistant professor at Stanford University, jointly appointed between Stanford Psychology, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Stanford Data Science. Her work is focused on understanding the neural representations and operations that give rise to speech comprehension in the human brain. In this episode, Laura introduces her recent paper titled” Large-scale single-neuron speech sound encoding across the depth of human cortex”. She shares the insig...
Apr 11, 2024•41 min
Eric chats with Paul van Lange, Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford. He is well known for his vast work on trust, cooperation, and morality, applying these themes to everything from Covid to climate change. He has published multiple handbooks and edited volumes on these topics. In this chat, Eric and Paul talk about the psychological barriers that stop people from fighting climate change. What do trust and cynicism have to do wi...
Mar 28, 2024•58 min
In this episode, Adani chats with Dr. Halie Olson! Halie is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Her research explores how early life experiences and environments impact brain development, particularly in the context of language, and what this means for children’s outcomes. Halie talks about the intriguing backstory and results of her recent pre-print paper titled “When the Brain Cares: Personal interests amplify engagement of language, self-reference, a...
Mar 14, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 128
Anjie chats with Dr. Guilherme Lichand. Guilherme is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, and a co-Director at the Stanford Lemann Center. His research interest explores the sources of education inequities in the global south, and in interventions with the potential to overturn them. In this episode, Guilherme talks about his recent paper titled “The Lasting Impacts of Remote Learning in the Absence of Remedial Policies: Evidence from Brazil”. He sha...
Feb 29, 2024•45 min
Eric chats with Michele Gelfand, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Michele’s culture lab studies the strength of cultural norms, negotiation, conflict, revenge, forgiveness, and diversity, drawing on many different disciplines. Michele is world-renowned for her work on how some cultures have stronger enforcement of norms (tight cultures), while others are more tolerant of deviations from the norm (loose cultures). She is the author of Rule Makers, ...
Feb 15, 2024•50 min
Marginalia Episode is a collaboration between Stanford Psychology Podcast and Marginalia Science, a community committed to including, integrating, advocating for, and promoting members who are not typically promoted by the status quo in academia. In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this episode, Anjie chats with Dr. Cristina Salvador, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Cristin...
Feb 01, 2024•36 min
This week, Rachel chats with Oriel FeldmanHall, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistics, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Oriel's lab leverages methods from behavioral economics, social psychology, and neuroscience to explore the neural bases of social behavior, and the role of emotion in shaping social interactions. She has won numerous awards, including the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s Young Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to science, the Association for Ps...
Jan 12, 2024•30 min
This week, Julia chats with Jacqueline Gottlieb, Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Institute for Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Columbia University in New York. Since joining the Columbia Faculty in 2001, she has spearheaded pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of attention and curiosity, using computational modeling combined with behavioral and neurophysiological studies in humans and non-human primates. In this episode, Profe...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr
