Dr. Daniel Bernstein, Research, ‘Eureka’ Moments, Advice, and Biggest Intellectual Influences
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/19
Dr. Daniel M. Bernstein works as the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Lifespan Cognition for the Psychology department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He is the principal investigator for the Lifespan Cognition Lab. Dr. Bernstein earned his Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, Berkeley, Master’s at Brock University, Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington. His research interests lie in “belief and memory; developmental metacognition; hindsight bias; mild head injury; sleep and dreams.” Dr. Daniel Bernstein is the primary investigator in the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair Lifespan Cognition Lab. Here we talk about a variety of educational, research, and psychology oriented topics. He’s been a boss, mentor, and eventually a good friend. Here is part 2.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you had sufficient funding for any topic, what would you research?
Dr. Daniel M. Bernstein: Exactly what I am studying now: Hindsight Bias, Theory of Mind, and False Memories.
Jacobsen: Many assume scientists and social scientists to have ‘Eureka’ moments, where they discover some fundamental process about nature in an instant. Yet, the truth of research comes from the rarely heard story of the scientist or social scientist assiduously working for years in the laboratory, and finding clues to fundamental processes in nature. How do you conduct research? What do you consider your methodology for coming to new ideas, developing research hypotheses based off them, and designing experiments and required materials for said ideas?
Bernstein: I do not know. I do not think that I am very organized about it. I pursue questions that are interesting to me. Sometimes I wonder if I am interested in too many questions. Something will occur to me and I think it is a good question. I talk to colleagues, and they sometimes agree that it is a good question. Sometimes, they disagree and tell me that it is not a good question. If I think that a question is worth pursuing with an experiment or set of experiments, then I will set out to design the simplest experiment(s) to answer that question. Very few questions can be answered with a single experiment. I start with an experiment that can answer part of the question. As I delve more deeply into the question, I realize that I am signing onto years of experiments to answer the question more fully. I speak here only for myself. Many questions I choose to ask will not have ready answers, and I know that they will take years to answer. I probably choose hard questions intentionally. Who wants to answer easy questions? I find that boring. In fact, in research, I do not think I have answered fully any question I have asked. However, I am not alone. I do not think Psychology fully answers the questions it asks. Psychology is too variable. It is too multifaceted, and it is too fraught with interactions. We try to simplify things as much as possible so that we can do our experiments and talk about the nature of behavior as if we understand it. Moreover, the busiest we ever seem to get in an experiment is a 3-way interaction. Really, folks? We are studying human nature and behavior after all. Thus, it is unlikely that we will derive a satisfactory explanation from a 2-way interaction or a 3-way interaction. Our answers will probably require a 100-way interaction. We are years away from answering even the most fundamental questions regarding human behavior precisely because those answers require extremely complex interactions. Perhaps we ask hard questions in Psychology because we do not want to answer those questions quickly. We want a good set of questions that we can pursue long into the future.
Jacobsen: For students looking for fame, fortune, and/or utility (personal and/or social), what advice do you have for undergraduate and graduate students in Psychology?
Bernstein: As much as possible and widely. Do not be afraid to ask difficult questions. Do not be discouraged by people’s attempts to tell you that you are wrong. In the end, it is not so much about who is right or wrong, but about sticking to your guns and pursuing your questions, being open to criticism and feedback, valuing criticism and feedback, incorporating it into your pursuit, and adjusting your pursuit accordingly. That said, I remember reading an article some years ago in the APA Monitor, the magazine of the American Psychological Association. The person who wrote it was a long-time cognitive psychologist. He had supervised some of the most influential cognitive psychologists working today. His advice was that it is just as important to have a good question that you can pursue for a long time, but that it is also important to be able to give up if the question is intractable. If you are pursuing a question that does not seem to be yielding at all, then it is time adjust your question, potentially ditch it and find a new question that does yield.
Jacobsen: Whom do you consider your biggest intellectual influences? Could you recommend any seminal or important books by them?
Bernstein: Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I took a course as an undergraduate with George Lakoff, who is a modern Whorfian and a linguist. Lakoff believes that our language and metaphor dictate the way we think rather than vice versa. This idea turns cognition on its head. It is not so much the way we think that dictates the way we speak, but the way we speak that dictates the way we think. The course was on metaphor, and the course was pivotal in shaping my interests. This course taught me to ask big questions, and to embrace controversy. In this class, we read “Metaphors We Live By”, Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Great book. Also as an undergraduate, I read Freud’s Interpretations of Dreams in my second year, when I took a directed study with my undergraduate supervisor Arnie Leiman. More than Freud, Arnie Leiman sparked my intellectual curiosity. Lehman was incredibly well read and once told me that, “When you cease to be well-informed, you become an asshole.” He was describing academia and beyond. If you want to be a responsible academic or world citizen, you should be well informed. This reminds me of Bob Dylan’s great line in a Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, “I’ll know my song well before I start singing.” Other intellectual influences? During my Ph.D., I worked with two really smart people: Vito Modigliani and Bruce Whittlesea. During my post-doctoral work, I had the great fortune of working with Elizabeth Loftus, whose “Eyewitness Testimony” profoundly shaped the way we interview witnesses and view their testimony in legal cases. In addition, during my post-doc, I worked with Geoff Loftus and Andy Meltzoff who have both had huge impacts on psychology and my intellectual development. Other great academic works: Vygotsky’s Language and Thought and Mind in Society. Works of Fiction: Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I once read or heard, but have not verified that Freud called Dostoevsky the greatest Psychologist. I think writers of fiction have a finger on the pulse of human nature and human behavior, and psychologists often overlook this fact.
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