Authoralluttrell

Dr. Matt Rocklage studies the words we use to express opinions. He’s an assistant professor of marketing the University of Massachusetts-Boston. In our conversation, Matt talks about the Evaluative Lexicon, which is a tool he developed to quantify the language of opinion. Take an online review, feed it into the Evaluative Lexicon, and it’ll tell you how much the person liked or disliked...

Jay Van Bavel studies how our social identities shape the way we see ourselves and the people around us. He’s an associate professor of psychology at New York University. In an upcoming book, he and his colleague, Dominic Packer, present social identity theory. It’s a classic theory in social psychology that has inspired tons of research and continues to give insight into the modern...

Michael F. Schein is a writer, speaker, and founder of the marketing agency, MicroFame Media. In his new book, The Hype Handbook, he explores the antics of historically successful “hype artists”—cult leaders, music promoters, propagandists, etc.—to extract 12 common strategies that get people excited about and committed to new ideas. In our conversation, we talk about how “hype” is...

Lara Aknin studies what makes people happy. In particular, she’s spent a lot of time looking at how being generous can improve one’s well-being. She is an associate professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University, and you heard her a couple weeks ago on Opinion Science. Her work was featured on our episode on gift-giving, but she has so much interesting work that it seemed setting...

Although 2020 will be remembered mostly for annoyances and deeply tragic events, one thing that kept me going this year was starting this podcast. Being able to talk with friends, people I’ve long admired, and people I had only recently met was a real joy. I wanted to put together an episode with some notable moments in Opinion Science this year. It’s not truly a “best of”...

It’s that time of year when winter holidays send people on a buying spree as they collect gifts to give to every friend, family member, and acquaintance. And you’d think that after so many years of giving gifts for all sorts of holidays, we’d be pretty good at it. Right? Well, not according to research in psychology. In this episode, we explore the psychology of why giving to others is such a...

Two guests! Drs. Eva Pietri and India Johnson stop by to share the important work they’re doing together on the power of role models for underrepresented groups in STEM fields. Things that come up in this episode: Women and racial and ethnic minorities are under-represented in STEM fields (National Science Board, 2020)Encouraging identity-safety in STEM among Black...

Dr. Eric Hehman studies the geography of bias. Lots of research has looked at the prejudice that lives in an individual person’s head, but Eric looks at the average amount of bias in particular location. On average, some counties have more implicit bias than others, and some states have more bias than others. But what does it mean? That’s what Eric and I talk about this week...

Melanie Green studies stories. She’s a professor of Communication at University of Buffalo, and for years she’s been looking into whether stories can serve to persuade people. Are stories just entertainment or can they change our minds? In this episode, we talk about stories, her research on persuasion, and the experience of being transported by a story. Topics that come up in this episode:...

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights. For five years, she co-hosted the podcast, The Pollsters, she hosts the SiriusXM show, The Trendline, and the Fox Nation show What Are the Odds?She also regularly appears on television to discuss the latest polls.She’s spent a lot of time looking at polls of Millennials in particular. In 2015, she...