Psychology Podcasts

Roy Baumeister of Florida State University and the author of Is There Anything Good About Men talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the differences between men and women in cultural and economic areas. Baumeister argues that men aren't superior to women nor are women superior to men. Rather there are some things men are better at while women excel at a different set of tasks and that these tradeoffs are a product of evolution and cultural pressure. He argues that evolutionary pressure has created different distributions of talent for men and women in a wide variety of areas. He argues that other differences in outcomes are not due to innate ability differences but rather come from different tastes or preferences.

Louis Menand of Harvard University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the state of psychiatry. Drawing on a recent article of his in the New Yorker, Menand talks about the state of knowledge in psychiatry and the scientific basis for making conclusions about mental illness and various therapies. Menand argues that the research record shows little difference between the effectiveness of psychopharmacology and talk therapies of various kinds in fighting depression. Neither is particularly successful in any one case. Other topics that are discussed include the parallels between economics and psychiatry in assessing causation, the diminished role of Freudianism in modern psychiatry, and the range of issues involved in using medication to avoid pain and hardship.

Russ Roberts looks at the economics and science of intermittent explosive disorder—violent rage out of proportion to its cause. Was the recent study that discovered this problem good science or unreliable? Was the media coverage of the study accurate? How do state insurance regulations create incentives for intellectual dishonesty?