Circle of Willis

Welcome to Episode 9, where I talk to HAL MOVIUS, founder and president of Movius Consulting, about the nature of confidence, the ways in which confidence can both help us and hurt us when we’re working through a difficult negotiation. My conversation with Hal takes Circle of Willis in a bit of a different direction, since Hal isn’t currently a working scientist, per se, but is instead applying his training and expertise in behavioral science to work with some of the world’s most impactful and recognizable companies and NGOs, including Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Ogilvy & Mather, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, the United Nations Development Program, the Federal Aviation Administration, the University of Chicago, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Rockefeller Foundation! Hal advises these organizations about the science of negotiation, influence, emotion regulation, leadership, and organizational development. As he notes in our conversation, “[the science on these topics] makes you cautious. It helps you recognize BS, which is in no short supply…[there are] endless claims…endless misrepresentations of research…and I like to think that the advice that we’re giving is really grounded in evidence…” Hal is a trusted advisor to the leaders of these companies, not least because he helps them spot and avoid unsupported claims and advice. Hal is the author of two books: Resolve: Negotiating Life’s Conflicts with Greater Confidence (2017, LifeTree Media) and Built to Win: Creating A World Class Negotiating Organization (Harvard Business Press, May 2009). He has produced a bunch of films on negotiation and influence challenges, published papers on the effectiveness of negotiation training, cross-cultural business negotiations, and dealing with difficult negotiation counterparts, and he has taught at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Most importantly, Hal Movius is among the closest friends I’ve ever had—ever will have. I met him 20+ years ago as a first-year graduate student at the University of Arizona, and my life has been far better as a result. In this episode, Hal talks with me not only about his specific areas of expertise, but also about how he came to work in the private sector instead of academia, when, it seemed to me, academia was his natural home. Hal has does things differently than most of us. He’s an independent thinker, and he’s passionate about his work. I’m thrilled to be able to share him with the world! Oh! Catch Dahlia Lithwick’s Slate interview with Hal here! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.

Hi Everyone!The HAL MOVIUS episode is coming soon, but it isn't quite ready for release yet. In the meantime, here's a short clip from our conversation about leaving academia, and the problem of confidence in difficult negotiations. More soon!Jim

Welcome to Episode 8, where I talk to SIMINE VAZIRE, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, about the stability of personality, our ability to know ourselves, and some of the nuances within the prescriptive advice of the Open Science Movement. Simine wears a number of different hats. In recent years, she’s been at or near the center of ongoing conversations among scientists about the virtues and challenges of open science. As part of this work, she co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) and co-hosts a science podcast (with Sanjay Srivastava and Alexa Tullett) called THE BLACK GOAT. Simine is also editor in chief of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and a senior editor at Collabra. Interestingly, Simine has also been a part of the conversation about the process of criticism in science. As most listeners well know, criticism is unquestionably essential if science is going to be self-correcting (which is of course the whole point!). One question the field has been grappling with is the point at which criticism crosses over into harassment and bullying—a question at the heart of a recent op-ed Simine wrote for Slate. I have my own thoughts on this question, which I’ll save for another time, but one of the reasons I was so keen to ask Simine to be on Circle of Willis is that I find her approach to grappling with such questions to be equal parts humble, charitable, and firm. She isn’t likely to allow a legitimate criticism to be brushed aside in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings, but neither is she going to participate in (or for that matter tolerate) bullying. I think that in our age of shoot-from-the-hip outrage, that can be a hard path to find, let alone walk, and I genuinely admire her efforts. There are many other things I love about Simine, but as you’ll hear in this episode, at or near the top of the list of her agreeable traits is that she’ll be the first to tell any of you that sometimes she’s wrong. We try to be right while tolerating (and admitting to) our mistakes. Oh, and — seriously — keep a notepad handy for this episode. Simine is unusually quotable! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.

Hi Everyone!The SIMINE VAZIRE episode is coming soon, but it isn't quite ready for release yet. In the meantime, here's a short clip from our conversation about Simine's role in the movement to improve psychological science. More soon!Jim

Welcome to Episode 7, where Professor MARCO IACOBONI and I talk about the mirroring, mirror neurons, the science of empathy, and how we understand the minds of others. Marco is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he directs the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Laboratory within the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Marco has written volumes of vitally important scientific papers, including a very famous paper published in the journal Science back in 1999 called Cortical Mechanisms of Human Imitation. But Marco has also written a fantastic, highly readable book for the general public that I recommend to anyone interested in the human mind generally, and human empathy more specifically. This book is called MIRRORING PEOPLE: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HOW WE CONNECT WITH OTHERS, and, as I said, it is excellent. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Check this out: “Those of us who thirty years ago began to speculate about the social brain never guessed what riches were in store. Iacoboni's book is both a thrilling account of how research on mirror neurons is revolutionising our understanding of inter-subjectivity, and a passionate manifesto for what he calls ‘existential neuroscience.’ Mirroring People does for the story of mirror neurons what The Double Helix did for DNA.” —Nicholas Humphrey, author of Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness As enjoyable as Marco is in Episode 7, I wish all my listeners could spend some actual time with him. Marco Iacoboni is one of he friendliest, optimistic, and open-minded folks you’re likely to meet. I feel very lucky indeed to count him as a friend. Thanks for the great conversation, Marco! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.

Hi Everyone!The MARCO IACOBONI episode is coming soon, but it isn't quite ready for release yet. In the meantime, here's a short clip from our conversation about mirror neurons. More soon!Jim

Hey Everyone! This is not a full episode of my podcast Circle of Willis!What this is…this is BONUS MATERIAL from Episode 6, where I talked with JOHN CACIOPPO.This is material that might be a little tougher for some people—people who are not social psychologists or psychophysiologists…But if you are one of those people, or if you're comfortable doing a little google searching, there is some great stuff here.It’s me and John Cacioppo talking about the work John did with Richard Petty on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, John’s methodological work on the field of Electromyography (see the awesome image at the right for the picture John and I laugh about), John’s willingness to forgo tenure in order to do the science correctly…good stuff!And of course at some point John and I just started to geek out about the early days of a discipline called psychophysiology. We talk a bit about how psychophysiologists can easily get really focused on their physiological specialty. It was great fun for me and I hope it's enjoyable for you, too!

Welcome to Episode 6, where Professor JOHN CACIOPPO and I talk about inferring causal associations between mind and body, and how to be human is to care for others. John is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor, and the founder and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, at the University of Chicago John’s contributions to the fields of Social Psychology, Psychophysiology, Social Neuroscience (an entire field he helped create more or less from scratch), research methodology, philosophy of science…on and on…would be hard or impossible to overstate. He is a quasi-religious figure to me in that I’ve been reading his methodological critiques and recommendations about mind-body research, as well as his work on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Electromyography, and Loneliness, for my entire career. I’ve described his groundbreaking book, PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY (later, the HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY) as the holy text of my scholarly origin story, and I mean it. It was published in 1990, right about the time I went back to college as a nervous 21-year-old, and soon after going to work in John Gottman’s lab. There, the book was literally required reading. As I moved through graduate school and well into my career, John has been a guide to the work I do, conceptually, methodologically, and philosophically, and the same can be said of a relatively unknown ocean of researchers all across the globe. John’s recent popular book, LONELINESS, covers decades of work he and others have done documenting the cost of social isolation, whether “objective” isolation (as he calls it) or perceived. It turns out that perceived isolation may be the most harmful of the two kinds, and in any case, isolation kills. We are not a species that relies on our own resources to survive just long enough to reproduce. We are a species that cares for others, and that expects to be cared for. At any rate, I hope you enjoy this chance to spend a little time with one of psychology’s most prolific and restless minds. I know I did. * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.

SNEAK PREVIEW: JOHN CACIOPPOHi Everyone! The JOHN CACIOPPO episode is coming soon, but it isn't quite ready for release yet. In the meantime, here's a short clip from our conversation. More soon!Jim

Hey everyone! This is not a proper episode of my podcast, Circle of Willis… It’s a BONUS EPISODE, sort of like the extras you get on a DVD or something like that. It's an extra bit of conversation recorded with LISA FELDMAN BARRETT What happened is: after Lisa and I recorded our first conversation, we got to chatting about how she started studying emotion and what it was like for her to go against the dominant view of what emotions were, and we realized that we should start the recorder again. We didn’t have as much time, but we did indeed switch on the recorder and continued our chat more or less as we had been doing. So now you get to hear Lisa describe not only what she knows, but a bit more about her process--how and why she started the work for which she's best known! Enjoy!