Jesse Singal || Fad Psychology

The Psychology Podcast

iHeartPodcasts

Science, Social Sciences

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jesse Singal is a contributing writer at New York and the former editor of the magazine’s Science of Us online vertical, as well as the cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Daily Beast, and other publications. He was a Bosch Fellow in Berlin and holds a master’s degree from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills will be published in April.

Topics

[1:45] How Jesse caught on to the issue of junk science

[5:18] What is "fad psychology"?

[10:30] Jesse’s critique of mindset interventions

[19:03] The challenges that scientists face

[20:10] Why do we hold scientists to a higher standard than self-help gurus?

[24:46] How valid is the Implicit Association Test (IAT)?

[29:00] Jesse’s thoughts on implicit bias

[31:39] Jesse and Scott discuss Angela Duckworth’s research on grit

[40:34] What does it mean to be living in the “age of fracture”?

[42:05] How Jesse responds to those who claim to benefit from non-scientifically validated self-help interventions

[45:16] Jesse’s thoughts on the science of self-esteem

[50:00] Jesse and Scott discuss monocausal vs multicausal accounts of human behavior

Links and Resources

Jesse Singal's book

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today, it's great to chat with Jesse single on the podcast.
0:17.8	Jesse is a contributing writer at New York magazine and the former editor of the magazine
0:21.4	Science of Us Online Vertical, as well as the co-host of the podcast, Blocked and Reported.
0:26.5	His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education,
0:30.0	Slate, the Boston Globe, the Daily Beast and other publications.
0:33.4	He was a Bosch Fellow in Berlin and holds a master's degree from Princeton University's
0:37.1	School of Public and International Affairs.
0:39.4	His book, The Quick Fix, Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills, has just been published.
0:45.8	Jesse, wow man, I just have so much I want to discuss with you today.
0:49.0	I read the book and feel like you condemned my whole field.
0:53.0	I can't wait to chat, I can't wait to see the thing.
0:55.5	I feel you're a very good guy and a very fair guy, but I definitely criticized some of
1:01.2	your people, so I'm happy to get into it.
1:03.5	Some of my dearest friends, not just some of my people, but anyway, it's all good, all
1:10.7	in the spirit of openness and making the field of psychology better, which I'm all about.
1:15.7	So I want to kind of go back to the kind of origin story of this.
1:19.6	You were at Science of Us, it's around 2015, around September, 2015, or even before
1:27.6	that, you're getting lots of press releases, and you're kind of just taking them all face
1:31.4	value.
1:32.4	So you're getting emails in your box, you're like, wow, here's the latest new press release.
1:37.8	Here's the latest new study that's, we found it's this better than sliced bread, you know
1:41.5	what we found.
	...

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