In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to award winning science writer David Robson. David has previously worked as a features editor at New Scientist and as a senior journalist at the BBC as well as writing countless articles for The Guardian, the Psychologist and many others. Sit back and listen as our co-hosts explore David’s life and work

The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life

The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

0.00 Introduction

2.51 What gets you excited about your work?

3.51 Your work spans many different scientific disciplines including neuroscience and psychology. How do you bring those two things together to understand how human beings operate?

5.04 Can you give us the pitch to your first book, The Intelligence Trap?

7.18 You have said that intelligent people are more susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories. Can you elaborate on that?

12.55 Is this problem getting worse?

14.31 Can we dig into a few of the mechanisms that are at work, such as over claiming and earnt dogmatism?

17.38 How do you build cognitive inoculation?

21.10 You’ve written that unconscious bias training may not be as straightforward and you present a more nuanced view about it. Could you talk to us a little about this?

23.56 Your second book is titled The Expectation Effect. Can you tell us what the expectation effect is and is not?

26.19 You have written how it’s possible to create different levels of change in your body for a long period of time that creates general conditions for good things to happen. Your research into the effect of the placebo is probably the most significant in this regard. Can you tell us a little more about that?

30.01 You also talk about the opposite which is the nocebo. Tell us about this.

33.40 The research by Alia Crum on fitness and eating is exciting in terms of giving us practical potential solutions for rethinking our mindset around these things.

39.03 You list some practical things that the reader can do to harness the expectation effect. Could you give us some examples of things that our listeners could start doing right now?

42.35 There are some potent takeaways around the expectation effect and its influence on longevity. Could you talk us through what you’ve learnt there?

46.45 What else should we be asking you?

51.29 What are you working on now?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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The Expectation Effect with David Robson