Tania Lombrozo
Tania Lombrozo is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an affiliate of the Department of Philosophy and a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Lombrozo directs the Concepts and Cognition Lab, where she and her students study aspects of human cognition at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, including the drive to explain and its relationship to understanding, various aspects of causal and moral reasoning and all kinds of learning.
Lombrozo is the recipient of numerous awards, including an NSF CAREER award, a McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition and a Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformational Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science. She received bachelors degrees in Philosophy and Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, followed by a PhD in Psychology from Harvard University. Lombrozo also blogs for Psychology Today.
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Though confusion can be bad, it's likely to benefit learning when it's related to the material you're trying to understand — and when you have the support to work through it, says Tania Lombrozo.
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Childhood is a time of pretend play, fantasy lands and make-believe. But Tania Lombrozo explores a study showing when factual stories are pitted against fictional tales, kids lean toward the real.
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As humans, forgetting isn't merely a bug, it's a design feature. Not every instance of forgetting is good but we should be grateful for some of the forgetting we take for granted, says Tania Lombrozo.
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It may be that it's scientific beliefs — not in isolation but in conjunction with political, religious and other beliefs — that shape our decisions and engagement in civic life, says Tania Lombrozo.
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Commentator Tania Lombrozo says there's been some — but not much — progress in real data on vegan pregnancies in recent years; what's out there points to the conclusion that it's likely safe.
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A recent study suggests people's beliefs about the likelihood of "catching" disorders like depression and anxiety add to the stigma of mental illness, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo.
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While negative stereotypes are obviously harmful, new research shows that positive stereotypes — like assuming blanket qualities of a female leader — aren't so great either, says Tania Lombrozo.
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Decisions about vaccinating one's children aren't simply a matter of weighing the relative benefits and risks. Psychologist Tania Lombrozo considers how subtle biases are also at play.
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What makes something a good magic trick? Commentator Tania Lombrozo discusses new research on what our intuitions about magic tricks may tell us about human cognition.
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Next time you shoot off an email between errands, will you praise your dedication or lament your inefficiency? Commentator Tania Lombrozo's New Year's resolution is to rethink emailing after hours.