Shankar Vedantam
Shankar Vedantam is the host and creator of Hidden Brain. The Hidden Brain podcast receives more than three million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations around the United States.
Vedantam was NPR's social science correspondent between 2011 and 2020, and spent 10 years as a reporter at The Washington Post. From 2007 to 2009, he was also a columnist, and wrote the Department of Human Behavior column for the Post.
Vedantam and Hidden Brain have been recognized with the Edward R Murrow Award, and honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Austen Riggs Center, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Webby Awards, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, the South Asian Journalists Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the American Public Health Association, the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion, and the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship.
In 2009-2010, Vedantam served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Vedantam is the author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives. The book, published in 2010, described how unconscious biases influence people. He is also co-author, with Bill Mesler, of the 2021 book Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain.
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There's an old saying: If you want to get something done, ask a busy person. Researchers find that busy people are more motivated to complete tasks after missing a deadline than their non-busy peers.
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Research shows that our biases can actually skew our perception of time. For police officers, this means some are at a greater risk for shooting unarmed black men.
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Research indicates when a partner dies happy and contented, that stays with the other person a long time, but when a partner dies unhappy and in pain, those feelings stay with the other one, too.
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A new research study finds that students exposed to their very best peers became discouraged about their own abilities and performance — and were more likely to drop out.
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Research shows that bettors are drawn to certain games not because of financial motives but because they get enjoyment out of them.
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Social science research examines how the mood of gamblers can change the way they think about risk. New Yorkers buy more lottery tickets when the weather is good and when their sports teams win games.
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Analysis explores the relationship among college football, binge drinking and sexual violence on campus. It suggests that reports of rape increase 41 percent on college football home games.
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A political fundraising experiment reveals: Small donors are more likely to open their wallets for political campaigns when they're told other donors who support a rival candidate are being generous.
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The fallacy is that we are surprised when things that are supposed to vary a lot, come down one way a number of times. We feel the next case must break the pattern. In reality, there is no pattern.
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Scientists have been studying reactions to terrorist events, and how those reactions shape public policy. They found emotional response to terror attacks is often out of proportion to actual risk.
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Our unconscious moral framework shapes how we make arguments. Research indicates that if you want to persuade people, you should frame your points using your opponents' moral framework.
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Research finds that viewers who binge watch are less engaged with ads than viewers who watch TV shows periodically. We explore the psychological reasons why binge watchers are less interested in ads.