There's an enormous number of times in life that over-optimism is helpful and there are many times when it's very dangerous. I talk about some work saying, I think it's at least in one case where psychologists have sort of gone wrong and need to correct. But this psychologist, clinical psychologist, Randolph Nesse says, we're missing the fact that having too little anxiety and fear is also a problem. He has this wonderful line where he says that people with too much anxiety, find him in psychiatrist's offices, people with too little anxiety,find him in morgues. So. Yeah. That's right. We might be smart at it. We may be over-
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.