Richard Nisbett - Does Introspection Actually Matter?

This week on Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby, Dr. Crosby speaks with Richard Nisbett. Richard Nisbett is a social psychologist and the author of Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where his advisor was Stanley Schachter, whose other students at that time included Lee Ross and Judith Rodin. His research interests focus on culture and reasoning. He studies basic cognitive processes, especially induction, statistical reasoning, causal attribution, cost-benefit analysis and logical vs. dialectical approaches to problem-solving. He has studied the degree to which cognitive processes can be trained and the differences in East Asian and Western reasoning styles.

Tune in to hear:

- On a previous podcast, Richard Nisbett expressed that the most central message of psychology is that we have no access to most of what goes on in our heads. What studies are illustrative of this dramatic conclusion he reached?

- What are the implications of this stream of thought, particularly in regards to free will and determinism?

- In light of this research, are things like introspection valuable or do they simply feel meaningful?

- If environment is highly influential in our decision making process, what can we do to create environmental prompts to improve the decisions we make?

- How can incentives for driving behavior backfire and why might consensus be a more powerful motivational tool?

- How can we consider all sides, to more effectively protect ourselves from confirmation bias, in an age when it’s so easy for really harmful, unvetted ideas to get propagated and shared widely.

- What’s a practical example of how one can use formal logic to improve decisions?

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Compliance Code: 1863-OAS-6/18/2021