Speaking of Psychology

Many Americans are headed back to the office this summer, but fault lines are emerging between some companies’ expectations for in-person work and their employees’ desire to continue working remotely. Tsedal Neeley, PhD, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere,” discusses the future of the post-pandemic office, how the pandemic has changed office culture and how employees and companies can both thrive in the new world of remote and hybrid work. Listener Survey - https://www.apa.org/podcastsurvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past decades, the focus of LGBTQ activism has shifted and evolved, from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s to the fight for marriage equality to the focus on transgender rights today. Peter Hegarty, PhD, author of the book “A Recent History of Lesbian and Gay Psychology: From Homophobia to LGBT,” discusses how psychological research has reflected and responded to these changes, how it has helped move the needle in the fight for LGBTQ rights in the U.S. court system, and his own research on “auditory gaydar” and continuing discrimination against LGBTQ people. Listener Survey - https://www.apa.org/podcastsurvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is psychology research in a crisis or a renaissance? Over the past decade, scientists have realized that many published research results, including some classic findings in psychology, don’t always hold up to repeat trials. Brian Nosek, PhD, of the Center for Open Science, discusses how psychologists are leading a movement to address that problem, in psychology and in other scientific fields, by changing the way that research studies get funded, conducted and published. Listener Survey - https://www.apa.org/podcastsurvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guns killed nearly 44,000 Americans in 2020, a higher number than in any other year in the past two decades. Meanwhile, a spate of mass shootings in the spring brought gun violence to the forefront of the national conversation again. Susan Sorenson, PhD, director of the Ortner Center on Violence and Abuse at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses what we know about the causes and consequences of gun violence in the United States and whether research can offer any insight into how to prevent it. Listener Survey - https://www.apa.org/podcastsurvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is your sleep schedule a mess lately? You’re not alone. The stress and disrupted routines of the past year have taken a toll on our sleep. Jennifer Martin, PhD, a professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, discusses how sleep affects our physical and mental health, what the pandemic has done to our sleep patterns, and effective behavioral treatments and advice that can help us get a good night’s rest. Links Jennifer Martin, PhD Take our listener survey at apa.org/podcastsurvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One year ago this week, George Floyd was murdered on camera by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. To mark the anniversary of Floyd’s death, we talked to Cedric Alexander, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and former police chief, about community policing, racial bias in policing, how communities and policymakers might rethink the role of police officers in ensuring public safety, and what can be done to restore trust between police departments and the communities that they serve. Links Cedric Alexander, PsyD Take our listener survey at apa.org/podcastsurvey Image Credit: Photo by Matthew Coughlin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zoom, Facebook, group text messages: This past year, technology has sometimes felt like the glue that’s kept many of our relationships alive. More and more, we talk to each other with technology in between us. Jeff Hancock, PhD, director of the Social Media Lab at Stanford University, discusses how this is affecting human communication, including whether people are more likely to lie online, whether the versions of ourselves that we present on social media are authentic, how artificial intelligence infiltrates our text messages, why video calls exhaust us more than in-person conversations, and more. Are you enjoying Speaking of Psychology? We’d love to know what you think of the podcast, what you would change about it, and what you’d like to hear more of. Please take our listener survey at www.apa.org/podcastsurvey. Links Jeff Hancock, PhD   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent years, research on the power of growth mindset has made the leap from the psychology lab to popular culture. Growth mindset is the belief that a person’s intelligence and abilities can grow and improve with practice, and researchers have found that brief exercises that increase growth mindset can help keep students motivated when they face challenges, improve their grades, and even increase college graduation rates. But scaling up those interventions from the research lab to diverse real-life settings is challenging. Dr. David Yeager, an associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses the science of growth mindset and how it could help close academic achievement gaps. Are you enjoying Speaking of Psychology? We’d love to know what you think of the podcast, what you would change about it, and what you’d like to hear more of. Please take our listener survey at www.apa.org/podcastsurvey. Links David Yeager, PhD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For people with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, or HSAM, every day is memorable. Ask them what they were doing on this date 10 years ago, and they’ll be able to tell you. Markie Pasternak, one of the youngest people identified with HSAM, and Michael Yassa, PhD, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California Irvine, talk about what it’s like to have this ability, what we know about how the brains of people with HSAM store and retrieve this vast amount of autobiographical information, and what studying this unique ability can teach us more generally about how memory works. Are you enjoying Speaking of Psychology? We’d love to know what you think of the podcast, what you would change about it, and what you’d like to hear more of. Please take our listener survey at www.apa.org/podcastsurvey. Links Michael Yassa, PhD - faculty.sites.uci.edu/myassa Markie Pasternak - http://livingwithtotalrecall.home.blog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the way you think about your brain and how and why it functions is just plain wrong? Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and author of the book “7 ½ Lessons About the Brain,” discusses myths about the brain and her theory that it evolved not to think but to control our bodies, and that emotions are not something we experience, but things that the brain creates in order to make sense of the signals it receives from the world. Are you enjoying Speaking of Psychology? We’d love to know what you think of the podcast, what you would change about it, and what you’d like to hear more of. Please take our listener survey at www.apa.org/podcastsurvey. Links Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD 7 ½ Lessons About the Brain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices