This week we are joined by two experts on people’s perceptions of the world and their influence on our actions. Laura has been an admirer, and drawn on the work of, Dr. Gilovich and Dr. Davidai for years, and during their conversation today, they generously indulge Laura as she asks them to apply their research and own personal practices to Laura’s own work in trauma, vicarious trauma, overwhelm, and systematic oppression/structural supremacy. They cover everything from enduring regret to the headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry. With humor and candor, they relay their pioneering research in very accessible ways and leave the listener with a tremendous amount to think about and a number of concrete take-aways.
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About Drs. Gilovich and Davidai
Dr. Tom Gilovich is a Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and is the Director of the Gilovich Judgment and Belief Lab. His research focuses on everyday human judgment fallacies, and he seeks to understand how people assess one another and their environments. He is particularly interested in how these perceptions lead to false understandings and conclusions, questionable beliefs, and incorrect courses of action. He has published multiple books, his research has been cited in more than 33,000 scientific works, and he appears regularly on podcasts and media sites across the country as people seek to make sense of the choices that get made.
Dr. Shai Davidai is an Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School. His research examines people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies the psychological forces that shape, distort, and bias people’s perceptions of the world and their influence on people’s judgments, preferences, and choices. His topics of expertise include the psychology of judgment and decision making, economic inequality and social mobility, social comparisons, and zero-sum thinking. His work has been published in top-tier journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Sciences, and the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. Shai received his PhD from Cornell University in 2015 where he studied with Dr. Gilovich, with whom he continues to collaborate and write.