58 - Susan Fiske: A Life of Studying Diversity and Stereotyping

Eric chats with Susan Fiske, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University. Susan is one of the world’s leading scholars studying social cognition, having written more than 400 articles and chapters as well as several books, including Envy Up, Scorn Down, and The Human Brand. She has won more awards than could possibly be listed, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award. Susan’s biography is currently being highlighted in the 40 Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine exhibit at the National Academy of Sciences, to which she was elected in 2013. 

In this episode, Eric asks Susan about her latest work on how diverse environments paradoxically make us see different ethnic groups as more, not less similar. In the second half of the chat, Susan reveals why she brings exotic chocolate to lab meetings and how to find a research idea worth pursuing. She talks about her complicated journey into academia and how she developed her influential stereotype content model. She discusses the importance of female role models and the obstacles women face in academia. As if that is not exciting enough, she even gives dating advice!

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Links:

Susan's paper on stereotype dispersion: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2000333117
Susan's book on envy and scorn: https://www.russellsage.org/publications/envy-scorn-down-1
Susan's book on marketing psychology: https://thehumanbrand.com/ 

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