Social Science Bites

Welcome to the blog for the Social Science Bites podcast: a series of interviews with leading social scientists. Each episode explores an aspect of our social world. You can access all audio and the transcripts from each interview here. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @socialscibites.

David Dunning giving a talk

David Dunning on the Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, explains David Dunning, comes when “people who are incompetent or unskilled or not expert in a field lack expertise to recognize that they lack expertise. So they come to conclusions, decisions, opinions that they think are just fine when they’re, well, wrong.”

3 months ago
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Claudia Goldin

Claudia Goldin on the Gender Pay Gap

Harvard University economic historian Claudia Goldin studies the origins, causes and persistence of the gender pay gap in the United States, which she discusses in this Social Science Bites podcast.

4 months ago
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Black and white photo of Will Hutton

Will Hutton on the State of Social Science

Political economist and journalist Will Hutton, author of the influential 1995 book The State We’re In, offers a state-of-the-field report on the social sciences in this Social Science Bites podcast.

5 months ago
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Headshot of Batja Mesquita

Batja Mesquita on Culture and Emotion

Batja Mesquita, a social psychologist at Belgium’s University of Leuven where she is director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, theorizes that what many would consider universal emotions – say anger or maternal love – are actually products of culture.

6 months ago
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Bobby Duffy wearing suit seen outdoors

Bobby Duffy on Generation Myths

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Bobby Duffy offers some key takeaways from the book and his research into the myths and stereotypes that have anchored themselves on generational trends.

7 months ago
2913
Gerd Gigerenzer in blue suit

Gerd Gigerenzer on Decision Making

Quite often the ideas of ‘risk’ and of ‘uncertainty’ get bandied about interchangeably, but there’s a world of difference between them. That’s a key message from psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer.

8 months ago
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Ellen Peters posing outdoors

Ellen Peters on Numeracy

A lack of ability of numbers is a serious issue in the world, in particular in the developed world, says Ellen Peters. And she’s trying to do something about that.

9 months ago
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Headshot of Jonathan Haskel

Jonathan Haskel on Intangibles

The knowledge economy. Intellectual property. Software. Maybe even bitcoin. All pretty much intangible, and yet all clearly real and genuinely valuable. This is the realm where economist Jonathan Haskel of Imperial College London mints his own non-physical scholarship.

10 months ago
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Sheila Jasanoff_rect

Sheila Jasanoff on Science and Technology Studies

Sheila Jasanoff is a pioneer in the field of STS. That acronym can be unpacked as either ‘science and technology studies’ or ‘science, technology and society.’ Jasanoff — who describes herself as a sociologist of knowledge and a constructivist, trained in law, working in the tradition of the interpretive social sciences – is content with either use.

11 months ago
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John ist at classroom podium

John List on Economic Field Experiments

Behavioral economist John List talks about his work on field experiments and how research done in the natural world can lead to insights that otherwise might be hard to tease out in a lab.

12 months ago
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