Dr. Daniel Casasanto: Culture, Language & Bodily Experiences

Dr. Daniel Casasanto has a knack for explaining complex and abstract concepts in a such a digestible way that you’re left leaving the conversation inspired. And this comes at no surprise. After receiving his PhD in Cognitive Science from MIT and currently a professor and active researcher at Cornell, he’s spent almost two decades exploring how language, culture, and bodily experiences influence the way people think, feel, and make decisions. By exploring how people with different experiences think differently, we can better understand universal processes by which people turn concrete interactions with their environment into abstract thoughts. During our conversation, he shares his insight into how language affects our perception and relativity of time, how our right- or left-handedness affects our subconscious understanding of what is good, and how these same hand tendencies affect our approach-avoidance behavior. We discuss all this and more.