Stanford Psychology Podcast

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 shaped in the digital age. In today's episode, we discuss his research background together with his recent review paper “The psychology of virality," in which they explore why certain content spreads rapidly online and offline, often involving a mix of emotional, social, and structural factors..Steve’s paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.014 Steve’s personal website: https://stevenrathje.com/ Su’s Twitter @sudkrc & Bluesky @sudkrc.bsky.socialPodcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

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 career. They talk about what it was like to pivot into consulting and how her psychology training prepared her to build products and teams. If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but helps us reach more people and get them excited about psychology.Links:Dr. Wong’s company B.peachy: https://bpeachy.online/Dr. Wong’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ying-wong/Anjie’s website: https://anjiecao.github.io/Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

In this engaging discussion, Dr. Susan Engel, a renowned psychologist from Williams College, dives into her extensive research on children's curiosity and intellectual development. She explores how curiosity evolves throughout life and the surprising decline many experience as they age. Dr. Engel highlights the link between curiosity and invention in children's play, as well as the critical role of autonomy in fostering curiosity. With insights into educational structures, she questions how environments shape our innate urge to know, making for a thought-provoking listen.

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 of Language in the Era of Generative AI".Roger’s review: https://mit-genai.pubpub.org/pub/ak3evnmm/release/1 Roger’s lab website: http://cpl.mit.edu/  Roger’s personal website: https://www.mit.edu/~rplevy/ Su’s Twitter: https://x.com/sudkrc Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Adan chats with Adam Benforado, a law professor and advocate for children's rights, whose works like 'A Minor Revolution' tackle critical issues in the legal system. They discuss how psychology reshapes legal assumptions about children and the decline of child-centered reforms. Adam emphasizes the importance of prioritizing kids, revealing that many protections are more symbolic than effective. He also shares his vision for youth empowerment through initiatives like Minor Power, aimed at giving children a voice in policy decisions, while urging empathetic communication in advocacy.

In this engaging conversation, Dr. Yuan Chang (YC) Leong, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the Computational Affective and Social Neuroscience Lab, dives into the fascinating world of emotional arousal and brain connectivity. He reveals how dynamic movie-watching can illuminate emotional responses, discussing the intricacies of arousal, misattribution, and the importance of context. YC also shares his excitement about using AI as a model to enhance our understanding of cognition and human behavior.

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: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14107 Jenn’s lab website: https://www.glintlab.org/ Jenn’s personal website: https://jennhu.github.io/ Su’s Twitter: https://x.com/sudkrc Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

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 our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.Dawn’s website: https://www.dawnfinzi.com/Elizabeth’s: website: imelizabeth.github.ioElizabeth’s BlueSky: @imelizabeth.bsky.socialPodcast BlueSky @StanfordPsyPod.bsky.socialPodcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

Join Jane as she chats with Dr. David Almeida, a leading researcher in daily stress from Penn State. They dive into how stress affects health and the surprising benefits of experiencing moderate stress. Dr. Almeida explains age-related differences in stress reactivity and how personality factors into our stress responses. He offers practical advice for handling stress, emphasizing the importance of social connections and movement. Discover a new perspective on stress that just might make you rethink its role in your life.

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.In today's episode, we discuss her interdisciplinary approach to research, along with her recent paper "Social Skill Training with Large Language Models," which introduces a new framework that supports making social skill training more available, accessible, and inviting.Diyi’s paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04204Diyi’s lab website: https://cs.stanford.edu/~diyiy/group.html Diyi’s personal website: https://cs.stanford.edu/~diyiy/index.html Su’s Twitter: @sudkrcPodcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Bluesky: @stanfordpsypod.bsky.socialPodcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.comThis episode was recorded on February 5, 2025.