Stanford Psychology Podcast

This week, Katia Kriakova has a conversation with William Damon, a professor at Stanford University. He is one of the world's leading researchers on human development across the lifespan and has pioneered the scientific study of purpose in life. In this conversation, we explore how we can make our own lives more purposeful and expand purpose beyond ourselves.

William Damon’s book on purpose: The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life

William Damon’s paper: The Psychology of Purpose: A Comprehensive Approach

William Damon’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedi...

This week, Katia has a conversation with Bill Burnett, an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He is the co-founder of Stanford's Life Design Lab and also the co-author of Designing Your Life and How to Live a Meaningful Life.  In this conversation, Bill shares how we can live in alignment with our values and compass, how prototyping can help us embrace uncertainty, and how to design a life that is more meaningful to us. 

Designing Your Life Website: https://designingyour.life/ 

Bill Burnett’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-burnett-4225401/  

Bill Burnett’s Books...

Adani chats with Nomisha Kurian, Assistant Professor in Education Studies at the University of Warwick, Associate Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and Associate at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research in Digital Education. Nomisha has been at the forefront of research on children’s safety and well-being, elucidating what it means for up-and-coming AI technologies to support children’s development and align with their best interests. She has also advised the UK Government Open Innovation Team, spearheaded policy briefs, and previously researched children’s rights law at Yale University...

In this episode, Elizabeth chats with Dr. Andrew Lampinen as a part of our Alumni in Industry series. Andrew is currently a Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic. Prior to joining Anthropic, he worked as a Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, and before that he earned his PhD here at Stanford and researched how humans are able to learn new things rapidly. His work bridges cognitive science and artificial intelligence, often with a focus on how the complex behaviors and representations of models, agents, or humans emerge from their learning experiences or data. In this episode, Dr. Lampinen...

Adani chats with Cynthia Osborne, Professor at Vanderbilt University and Executive Director of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center. Prof. Osborne’s work focuses on translating developmental science into effective, evidence-based policies for families and young children in the U.S. We discuss what the field of Early Childhood Policy entails, the ongoing work that Prof. Osborne and the Impact Center conduct, and why the first three years of childhood are so critical. Prof. Osborne also tells us about her path into her current work, how she built the Impact Center’s wonderful team, and what advice she would pass on t...

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Julia Nolte, Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology at Tilburg University. Julia’s research examines how information management, risk perception, and decision-making change across adulthood. She is particularly interested in what keeps people, especially older adults, from making well-informed and high-quality decisions, and how we can better support people in making choices that align with their goals and values.

In our conversation, Julia discusses how her early interest in theater sparked her interest in psychology, how she came to study aging and decision-making, and what her work can teach us about information av...

In this re-air (but more timely than ever!) episode from 2021, Anjie chats with Alison Gopnik, Professor at the Department of Psychology and Affiliate Professor at Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. Alison is not only a great cognitive scientist and philosopher who has made many groundbreaking contributions to the field, but also a great science communicator. Alison authored multiple bestselling books, including The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, The Gardener, and the Carpenter. She also writes widely about cognitive science and psychology for multiple national outlets including the NYT, the Atlantic, and so on. In this episode, we...

Adani chats with Elizabeth Bonawitz, Professor of Learning Sciences at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Elizabeth’s work focuses on basic theories of learning with the broader goal of informing educational practice. She uses computational, behavioral, and neural methods to study a broad variety of things within cognitive development, from children’s curiosity and belief revision to their exploration and play. We discuss Elizabeth’s view of cognitive development research and, most importantly, the secret formula behind her great academic paper titles and funny talks. Elizabeth also tells us about her path into science and what she’s most excited...

Nick Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. Nick is one of the “World’s Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets and Quants. He just published his second book for a popular audience called "A Little More Social."

In this episode, Eric and Nick talk about "undersociality," the key idea in his latest book. Are we being less socia...

In this reair episode from 2023, Eric chats with Amit Goldenberg, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Amit studies emotions in social interactions, for example in political contexts and on social media. He was a journalist and author before becoming an academic.

In this episode, Eric and Amit talk about how emotions operate in groups. Do crowds easily go “mad”? What emotions spread faster in groups? Why are we drawn to people more politically extreme than us? How is social media shaping our emotions and political behavior? Finally, Amit shares his journey from being a jour...

In this reair episode, Eric chats with Juliana Schroeder, Associate Professor in the Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas. She studies how people think about the minds of other people, and how they are often wrong trying to understand what others are up to. Her work has been discussed in outlets ranging from Vice to The Atlantic and Forbes.

Eric and Juliana review her exciting recent work on “undersociality.” Talking to other people is often meaningful, not just for extraverts, and yet we hesitate to talk to others, making overly pessimistic predictions about how awkward and unpleasant such...

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 and Development of educational technology through co-design with lecturers and students, with a focus on XR, AI-supported learning, and accessibility.

In this episode, Adani and Ju...

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 interpersonal emotional processes are beneficial for healthy aging, and how these processes may go awry and contribute to depression. 

Marginalia Episodes are in collaboration with Marginalia Science! Marginalia Science is a community committed to promoting the work of scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in academia. In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter.

In this re-air episode from 2025, Enna chats with Professor Erica Bailey at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Erica broadly studies the construct of authenticity, asking questions like, how do we know who we are? When do we feel the most like ourselves? Why do we often fail, despite our best efforts, to...

Adani chats with Tamar Kushnir, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Tamar’s research spans pretty much everything you can imagine: Cognitive development, causal learning, social cognition, moral cognition, cultural psychology, free will, imagination, counterfactual thinking, self-control, and more! In this conversation, we discuss Tamar’s fascinating review on imagination and social cognition in childhood alongside many fun tangents about superheroes, the Wright Brothers, and collective social change. Tamar also shares what she most enjoys about research in the first place, and what she’s excited for next!

Tamar’s faculty webpage: https://dibs.duke.edu/prof...

In this re-air episode from 2022, Eric chats with Robin Dunbar, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford. Robin has famously studied the evolution of the human brain, arguing that our brain developed to understand the complex social world we have created for ourselves. Most know him for “Dunbar’s number,” or the limit to the number of individuals we can maintain stable relationships with. Robin has received more awards than could be counted, including the prestigious Huxley Memorial Medal. He has written various books, most relevant for this conversation a book called “Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Importan...

Anjie chats with Dr. Nicky Sullivan, senior researcher at Impact Justice, a national non-profit innovation and research center focused on transforming the U.S. criminal justice system. Dr. Sullivan received his PhD from Stanford Psychology Department in 2024. During his PhD, he studied parents' and children's beliefs about race and racial inequality. In this episode, Nicky shares his journey from studying race in the lab to evaluating innovative initiatives like The Homecoming Project at Impact Justice. He offers practical advice for grad students on networking, while reflecting on the challenges of pursuing system reform in today’s shifting political landscape.

Su chats with Dr. Steve Rathje. Dr. Rathje is an incoming Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an NSF and AXA postdoctoral fellow at New York University. Steve’s work centers on the psychology of technology. He studies how core psychological phenomena like polarization, intergroup conflict, the spread of information, and mental health interact with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and social media. Through a combination of behavioral science, computational methods, and large-scale data, his research sheds light on how our minds and our societies are being sh...

Anjie chats with Dr. Ying Wong, founder and CEO of B.peachy and former cultural psychologist. Ying received her PhD in Psychology from Stanford in 2007, where she studied shame and guilt through a cultural lens. After academia, she built an impressive career across global business, and she now is the founder and CEO of B.peachy, a company dedicated to menstrual care.

In this episode, Anjie and Ying discuss Ying’s remarkable journey from academia into the business world, and how she has carried her training in social psychology into every stage of her ca...

Adani chats with Dr. Susan Engel, a Senior Lecturer and Senior Faculty Fellow in Psychology at Williams College. Susan’s research spans many areas, including the development of curiosity and invention, children’s ideas, the impact of college, and school reform. In this conversation, we discuss Susan’s seminal research on children's curiosity, how curiosity develops into adulthood, and her latest book, The Intellectual Lives of Children. Susan also shares the story behind how she first started in this field of research, and the projects she’s excited to work on next.

Susan’s website: https://psychology.williams.e...

Su chats with Dr. Roger Levy. Dr. Levy is a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, where he directs the Computational Psycholinguistics Laboratory. His research focuses on theoretical and applied questions in the processing and acquisition of natural language. His work furthers our understanding of the cognitive underpinning of language processing and acquisition, combining computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation, and analysis of large, naturalistic language datasets, to help design models and algorithms that will allow machines to process human language. In today's episode, we discuss his research background together with his recent work "The Science...

In today’s episode, Adani chats with Adam Benforado, a lawyer, writer, and professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law. Adam’s research, teaching, and advocacy are focused on children’s rights and criminal justice, and he brings insights from the mind sciences—most notably cognitive psychology—to law and legal theory. In this conversation, Adam tells us about his latest book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All, laying out the multifaceted, complex context around children’s rights and parental authority in the U.S. Adam also shares how he first got to work on the issues...

Su chats with Dr. Yuan Chang (YC) Leong. YC is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He is the director of Computational Affective and Social Neuroscience Lab, which is a part of the Department of Psychology, a member of the Institute of Mind and Biology and the Neuroscience Institute, and an affiliate of the Data Science Institute. His research explores the neural and computational mechanisms underlying how goals, beliefs, and emotions influence human cognition, with a focus on why people interpret and respond to identical situations in different ways. In today's episode, we discuss what’s...

Su chats with Dr. Jennifer Hu. Jenn is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, directing the Group for Language and Intelligence. Her research examines the computational principles that underlie human language, and how language and cognition might be achieved by artificial models. In her work to answer these questions, she combines cognitive science and machine learning, with the dual goals of understanding the human mind and safely advancing artificial intelligence. We are discussing Jenn’s paper titled “Signatures of human-like processing in Transformer forward passes."

Jenn’s paper...

Elizabeth chats with Dr. Dawn Finzi, a Machine Learning engineer on the Perception team at Zoox, and a recent alumni of our very own Stanford’s Department of Psychology, as a part of our new Psychologist in the Wild series. During her PhD, Dawn studied the functional organization of the human visual system, focusing on both the structural underpinnings and the overarching computational goals. In this episode, Dawn shares her scientific journey from PhD to industry, and how her PhD experience translates to her current role at Zoox. 

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on...

Jane chats with Dr. David Almeida, a  Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State. He is the Principal Investigator of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE), the largest longitudinal diary study of daily experiences and health in the United States. Dr. Almeida’s work examines how daily experiences of stress are associated with health and well-being. 

In this episode, Jane and Dr. Almeida discuss the ways in which people experience and react to stress in their daily lives, who is most likely to experience and be reactive to stress, ways to manage stress, and...

In this episode, Su chats with Diyi Yang, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford Human Computer Interaction Group, Stanford AI Lab, and Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She is also leading the Social and Language Technologies Lab, where they study Socially Aware Natural Language Processing. Her research goal is to better understand human communication in social context and build socially aware language technologies via methods of NLP, deep learning, and machine learning as well as theories in social sciences and linguistics, to support human-human and human-computer interaction.

This week, Misha chats with Katy Milkman, the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, her research explores how insights from economics and psychology can be harnessed to change consequential behaviors for good. Her work, published in journals like Nature and PNAS, has been recognized by Thinkers50 as among the world’s most influential in management thinking.

In this episode, they discuss Katy’s influential work designing “megastudies” to generate new insights about be...

This week, Misha chats with Julian Jara-Ettinger, Associate Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Yale University. Julian directs the Computational Social Cognition Lab, which aims to reveal the fundamental representations and computations that make complex human social behavior possible. His work combines computational modeling, developmental studies, and cross-cultural research to build a blueprint for more human-like social intelligence.

In this episode, we discuss his recent paper, "Tracking minds in communication," which challenges the classical view of language and social reasoning as separate systems. They explore how our brains constantly run social "micro-processes" in real-time to track...

In this re-air episode from summer 2021 (one of our first!), Anjie chats with Judy Fan, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Judy’s research is at the intersection of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, she discusses a new line of research in her lab exploring how people learn about objects by trying to build them from scratch. She and her team recruited people online to play a game where they aimed to reconstruct various block towers and analyzed the types of mistakes they made, as well as how they got better at the ga...

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Mike North, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, at NYU Stern School of Business and founding director of the AGE Initiative. 

Mike’s research focuses on the challenges and opportunities of today’s multigenerational workforce. His work has shaped public conversations on aging and has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, TIME, and so on.

In our conversation, Mike shares stories from his early days as a researcher, and we dive into two of his recent papers on ageism—one inv...

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 learning. Laura has also received numerous scientific awards, such as the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psy...

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 social reasoning work together when we try to help others understand what we're talking about. They also dive into Robert's academic journey, his vision for the Social Interaction Lab...

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 outlines important points for brain scientists to think about when creating and using large-scale fMRI datasets, and shares parts of his journey as a scientist.

Discussed Papers...

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 researcher, the story behind how she began to study positivity resonance, and what we can all do to navigate conflict with warmth an...

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, blending anthropology and cognitive science to tackle age-old questions about the human mind.

Dorsa’s website: https://www.dorsaamir.com/
Do...

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 breakthrough LLMS like DeepSeek to AI agents, the nature of memory and confabulation, the challenges to aligning AI with human values when we humans don’t even ag...

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 on contentious issues, they may actually be viewed as less trustworthy than those who openly disagree. Through a series of experiments...

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 Haas School of Business. Erica broadly studies the construct of authenticity, asking questions like, how do we know who we are? When do we feel...

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 human preferences, how social media is harnessing our attention, how to protect our privacy as AI is becoming more and...