Joel Pearson: Hacking Psychology to Measure the Mind

[13:49]

Online dating, how many of us lie about our profiles to change the psychology of someone’s perception about us? Do we really say what we think? How do we measure one’s mind? Joel Pearson talks about the ways and techniques scientists and psychologists can hack into our brains. Through techniques such as visual illusions and emotional inception, we learn about how malleable our brains can be and the means in which we can measure it.

Joel Pearson is a National Health and Medical Research Council fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UNSW. He is also a psychologist, neuroscientist and public intellectual working at the forefront of science, innovation and agile science. Joel has come a long way from his early career in filmmaking at COFA. He is now director of the Pearson Lab, a multidisciplinary agile Cognitive Neuroscience research group. He is also the founder and director of the UNSW Science of Innovation Lab, a world-first, hands-on research lab studying the Psychology and Neuroscience of entrepreneurship and innovation. So great is his passion for high-risk discovery science that Joel has developed a method called Agile Science, a practical guide to practicing and reporting scientific discoveries – the ‘Lean Startup’ for the world of science.

[Video source: TEDx Talks YouTube link]