367: Cory Clark | Victimhood For Resources, Adversarial Collaborations, And Motivated Free Will Belief

How does one use victimhood for resources, and what qualities does such a person possess? What can we get when scientists of differing viewpoints work together? Can one be motivated to look at free will in others differently based on a view of their moral nature? I discuss these topics and more with returning guest behavioral scientist Dr. Cory Clark on episode 367 of The Armen Show.

From her bio, “Cory Clark, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Co-Founder (along with Professor Philip Tetlock) of The Adversarial Collaboration Research Center at University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department.

She received her Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from University of California, Irvine in 2014. Between then and now, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at University at Buffalo and Florida State University, an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Durham University in the United Kingdom, and the Director of Academic Engagement for Heterodox Academy.

She co-hosts a podcast, Psyphilopod, which has been described as “Ruthlessly truthful and highly insightful conversations on psychology, philosophy, politics, and academic culture.”

She considers herself a Moral and Political Psychologist, but she is particularly interested in how people (scientists and non-scientists) interact with information in ways that allow them to maintain and justify their preferred worldviews. Scientists are but mere mortals, and consequently, they are vulnerable to similar biases, errors, motivations, and psychological needs as other people. Although she has great admiration for the scientific method, individual scientific findings warrant scrutiny and skepticism. She hopes her blog reflects that spirit.

You can find her CV, which links to most of her work on her website. All of her academic publications are available for free on ResearchGate. And you can follow her on Twitter for brief descriptions and discussions of recent social scientific findings that she finds interesting or perplexing.”