Alexa Tullett
Co-Host of Two Psychologists Four Beers
Alexa's research examines scientific, religious, and political beliefs, and the factors that facilitate or impede belief change. Some of her work takes a meta-scientific approach, using psychological methods to study the beliefs and practices of psychological scientists.
Alexa is also 1/3 of The Black Goat, the first and best podcast about psychology.
Alexa Tullett has hosted 43 Episodes.
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Episode 84: Check Your Values?
April 6th, 2022 | 1 hr 8 mins
cheap cheese, democracy, light bud light with lime, peeping through holes, scientific values, w. e. b. du bois
Alexa and Yoel debate whether or not science should be value free. They consider whether such a scenario would be possible or desirable, and how well it describes contemporary social psychology
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Episode 83: Grand Challenges
March 23rd, 2022 | 1 hr 15 mins
activist scientists, decolonization, grand challenges, taxes
Yoel and Alexa respond to an APS survey identifying the "grand challenges" of psychological science. They consider whether they agree with the list - which includes diversity, theory building, and science communication - and how likely psychology is to make progress.
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Episode 82: Psychology Worth Knowing
March 9th, 2022 | 1 hr 15 mins
hazy india pale lagers, investing, motivated reasoning, naive realism
We each list the top three social psychological effects that have the most potential to improve people's daily lives. And, we consider why they might not be having the impact they could.
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Episode 81: Against Retribution
February 23rd, 2022 | 1 hr 10 mins
law, responsibility, retribution, truckers, valentine's day
Alexa and Yoel discuss a recent article, solo-authored by Alexa, that argues for abandoning retribution as a goal of the criminal justice system. In the article, Alexa claims that "who is blameworthy?" is a question for the social sciences, but one they're ill-equipped to answer.
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Episode 80: The C-Word (with Julia Rohrer)
February 9th, 2022 | 1 hr 26 mins
alcohol-free beer, causal inference, directed acyclic graphs, structured abstracts
Personality psychologist and methodologist Julia Rohrer joins the show to talk about causal claims, strategic ambiguity, and how tough it is to tell what empirical claims many psychology papers are making.
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Episode 79: All About Authenticity
January 26th, 2022 | 1 hr 21 mins
authenticity, dr. oz, self-presentation, the self
Alexa and Yoel talk authenticity. What is it? Is it good to have it? And why does Alexa score higher on it than Yoel? Plus, Alexa drinks some listener-supplied beer, with favorable results.
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Episode 78: Meehl on Theory
January 12th, 2022 | 1 hr 8 mins
meehl, methods, spielraum, tandem bikes, theory, zelda
Alexa and Yoel do a deep dive into Paul Meehl's paper on theory evaluation, "Appraising and Amending Theories: The Strategy of Lakatosian Defense and Two Principles that Warrant It." It's a classic of methodology and philosophy of science, but what can it tell us about how to do better research?
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Episode 77: Against Method?
December 8th, 2021 | 1 hr 14 mins
dolly parton, feyerabend, method, philosophy of science
Alexa and Yoel tackle Paul Feyerabend, the wild man of philosophy of science. What can we learn from his provocative "anything goes" argument for methodological anarchy? And, more generally, what can working scientists learn from philosophers of science?
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Episode 76: Preregistration (What is it Good For)
November 17th, 2021 | 1 hr 7 mins
cardi b, field experiments, methods, preregistration, researcher degrees of freedom
Alexa and Yoel talk about objections to preregistration. Does preregistration imply that researchers can't be trusted? Does it mean that they can't use their best judgment? When might preregistration be unhelpful? We also discuss how preregistration would have helped in a recent paper testing Cardi B's maxim that "hoes don't get cold."
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Episode 75: Beyond Experiments
November 3rd, 2021 | 1 hr 7 mins
causal inference, nobel prize, non-experimental data
Alexa and Yoel talk about a paper purporting to show that winning the Nobel Prize increases your lifespan. In the process, they dip their toes into non-experimental causal inference.
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Episode 74: Pleasurable Suffering (with Paul Bloom)
October 13th, 2021 | 1 hr 24 mins
kidneys, mountain climbing, orgasms, parenting, suffering
Paul Bloom joins us to talk about why we want to suffer. Sometimes it's a means to an end, but sometimes we desire it for its own sake. Plus, a very special extra guest host.
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Episode 73: We Need to Talk About Fraud (with Joe Simmons)
September 29th, 2021 | 1 hr 22 mins
data police, dishonesty, fraud, open data
Yoel and Alexa are joined by Joe Simmons to talk about fraud in behavioral science. How common is it, how do you detect it, and what can we do to prevent it?