Stanford Psychology Podcast

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.

In this engaging conversation, Katy Milkman, a renowned professor at The Wharton School, shares her groundbreaking research on behavior change. She discusses innovative 'megastudies' that unlock insights into effective habits and highlights how psychological insights can complement economic theories. Katy also delves into her non-traditional educational journey, the vital role mentorship plays in academia, and how ownership language can encourage positive health behaviors. Her passion for translating science into actionable strategies is both inspiring and eye-opening.

Julian Jara Ettinger, Associate Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Yale, leads the Computational Social Cognition Lab. He discusses his paper on the intricate link between language and social reasoning, revealing how our brains employ real-time social micro-processes during communication. Julian shares insights from his research on how we comprehend others' minds, highlighting the balance between complex and simplified cognitive strategies. He also reflects on his interdisciplinary journey in cognitive science and its implications for understanding human interaction.

In this re-air episode from summer 2021 (one of our first!), Anjie chats with Judy Fan, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Judy’s research is at the intersection of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, she discusses a new line of research in her lab exploring how people learn about objects by trying to build them from scratch. She and her team recruited people online to play a game where they aimed to reconstruct various block towers and analyzed the types of mistakes they made, as well as how they got better at the game over time. Insights from experiments like these may help reveal the cognitive principles that govern how people "reverse-engineer" how things are made — from how an unfamiliar dish was prepared to how a song was composed.You can learn more about this project by visiting this site: https://github.com/cogtoolslab/block_construction and read their paper here: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/pdf/mccarthy_cogsci_2020.pdfTo learn more about Judy Fan's research, check out her lab's website: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/.You can also follow her on Twitter (@judyefan).

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Mike North, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, at NYU Stern School of Business and founding director of the AGE Initiative. Mike’s research focuses on the challenges and opportunities of today’s multigenerational workforce. His work has shaped public conversations on aging and has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, TIME, and so on.In our conversation, Mike shares stories from his early days as a researcher, and we dive into two of his recent papers on ageism—one investigating bias against older adults, even among equality advocates, and another unpacking stereotypes about younger generations.Mike’s Website: https://www.mike-north.com/ Mie’s Twitter: @MichaelSNorthMike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-north-7aa39b50/ Mike’s Papers: (1) https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000262 (2) https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001064 Enna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/ Enna’s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChenPodcast Contact: stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ Podcast Contact: stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com