18 - Abigail Marsh: Surprising Predictors of Everyday Kindness

Eric chats with Abigail Marsh, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Georgetown. Her work has focused on phenomena as diverse as empathy, altruism, aggression, and psychopathy. In 2017,  Abby published her book, The Fear Factor, describing her fascinating research with extreme altruists on the one hand and individuals with psychopathy on the other. She is the former President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society.

In this episode, Abby challenges the common assumption that individualism means selfishness. Instead, she has found that individualism predicts more kindness, just like being healthy and wealthy predicts being kinder to others. Eric and Abby discuss if our understanding of individualism is wrong, if kindness might look different in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures, and if people are too cynical these days.

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Links:

Abby's paper
Abby's book The Fear Factor
Abby's Twitter @aa_marsh

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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