Is There a Sweet Spot for Everything?

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A lot of your colleagues and economic exception recently are rebelled against the idea of the rational man. I like your take on rationality. It's kind of a silly question whether human beings are rational or not. We're extremely partisan in our politics. We often get facts wrong. And it seems, oh my God, we're so stupid.

Do psychologists know anything? Psychologist Paul Bloom says yes--but not the things that you might think. Bloom discusses his book Psych with EconTalk's Russ Roberts and what the field of psychology can teach us about human intelligence, consciousness, and unhelpful instincts. They also discuss just how far psychology is from a true understanding of the human mind, and why, according to Bloom, that might not be such a bad thing.