17 - Scott Barry Kaufman: The Light Triad - A Psychology of Everyday Saints

Eric chats with Scott Barry Kaufman, cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist renowned for a series of groundbreaking books such as Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, Wired to Create, and, most recently, Transcend. Scott is founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential and has taught various classes at universities such as Columbia, Yale, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania. He hosts the #1 psychology podcast in the world, “The Psychology Podcast,” with over 20 million downloads. He has written for outlets such as The Atlantic, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review.

In this episode, Scott discusses his latest research on what he calls the “light triad.” While many researchers have been concerned with what is called the “dark triad,” encompassing features of everyday psychopaths, Scott and his co-authors have started to investigate what makes for an everyday saint. Eric and Scott discuss that we have more everyday saints among us than we think and that everyone is a mix of everyday saint and psychopath.

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Links:

Scott's article on the light triad in the Scientific American
Scott's paper on the light triad
Scott's Twitter @sbkaufman

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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