266. Jesse Singal on Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills

<p>Michal Shermer and Jesse Singal discuss: how social scientists determine causality • Primeworld: cognitive priming and how it works (and doesn’t work) • The Malcolm Gladwell-effect (named after the 10,000-hour effect, by Anders Ericsson) • the self-esteem and self-help personal-empowerment movements • power posing and positive psychology • New Age self-help movements • Grit (stick-to-itiveness) (Darwin’s “dogged as does it.”) • Persistence is task specific and context dependent • Big 5 personality as determiners: Grit = Conscientiousness • Implicit Association Test and racism, misogyny, and bigotry • the replication crisis, what caused it, and what to do about it • choice architecture and the nudging of human behavior • race, gender, class, I.Q. and other radioactive topics in group differences • free will and determinism • nature/nurture and how lives turn out • abortion • and U.S. foreign policy.</p> <p>Jesse Singal is a contributing writer at <em>New York</em> and the former editor of the magazine’s <em>Science of Us</em> online vertical, as well as the cohost of the podcast <em>Blocked and Reported</em>. His work has appeared in the <em>New York Times</em>, <em>The Atlantic</em>, <em>The Chronicle of Higher Education</em>, <em>Slate</em>, <em>The Daily Beast</em>, <em>The Boston Globe</em>, and other publications. He is a former Robert Bosch Foundation fellow in Berlin and holds a master’s degree from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.</p>