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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What can Swedish furniture teach us about getting kids to eat their veggies? Cognitive scientist Tania Lombrozo considers new research on the "IKEA effect."
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As many families prepare for a visit from Santa, and some face questions about the jolly old man in the red suit, a new study looks at how children react to surprising claims, says Tania Lombrozo.
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Do people like Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins impact public opinion on how science and religion relate? Tania Lombrozo considers a study on the influence of big-name scientists on the debate.
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Science will one day explain visual perception and memory loss. But will it also explain romantic love and morality? Tania Lombrozo considers people's beliefs about what science can and can't explain.
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Tania Lombrozo looks at a new paper arguing that research on the public's understanding of science often conflates knowledge and understanding — and that this conflation has costs.
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Despite my skepticism at the outset, for a light and amusing TV sitcom "The Good Place" does a pretty good job with philosophy — and a pretty good job with human psychology, too, says Tania Lombrozo.
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People see the causes of mass shootings differently, depending on whether they own guns. Those who don't own guns often blame such incidents on the widespread availability of guns — but owners do not.
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Not all feelings of curiosity are the same. A study finds that one factor affecting the balance of negative and positive when it comes to curiosity is time, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo.
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In the child's world of Twenty Questions, it's pretty easy to evaluate what makes a good question. But producing good questions in the real world can be a more complicated affair, says Tania Lombrozo.
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Many things can be learned just as well later — so the focus should be on ones that really need to be early, like languages, music and communication, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo.