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PsyberSpace - we help you understand your world: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Leslie Poston, Research Psychologist: Applied Psychology, Media Psychology, Organizational Psychology
PsyberSpace® is a weekly psychology podcast for curious people who want to understand why the world feels the way it does, online and offline. The show helps you name what you’re seeing and feeling, understand the science behind it, and figure out what to do next. If you've ever wondered what makes "reply guys" tick, why we fall for emotionally manipulative language in politics, why meetings suck, why comfort can keep us stuck, why limerence hits so hard, or how music and media reshape your brain, you’re in the right place. New episodes drop every Monday to help you understand your world a little better each week. PsyberSpace looks at how psychology, media, and big systems shape everyday life. Some weeks it’s algorithms, AI, and social platforms; other weeks it’s work culture, gender and power, climate anxiety, grief, or the way capitalism sets the baseline for what “normal” looks like. Each episode breaks down how these patterns show up in real people’s bodies and minds—and what you can do to respond with more clarity, care, and agency in your own life, work, and community. 2025 Webby Award Honoree 2026 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee 2025 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee 2024 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 3 days ago25 min
Wired for War: The Psychology of Leaders Who Choose Conflict
War, Power, and the Psychology of Leaders: Dark Traits, Moral Disengagement, and AI-Driven DistanceDr. Leslie Poston argues that war is a predictable failure of leadership selection: the traits that help people gain power, Dark Triad and Tetrad traits like narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism, are the same traits that make leaders dangerous when it comes to decisions about conflict. She traces this pattern through current wars including the US-Iran strikes, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Afghanistan-Pakistan. The episode explores how Bandura's moral disengagement operates in modern warfare, how technologies like autonomous weapons and AI targeting systems are widening the accountability gap between leaders and consequences, and why violence is cognitively simpler than peace. She draws a structural parallel between military and corporate leadership failures, particularly in the AI industry's treatment of creative workers, and closes with research-backed interventions for changing who ends up in positions of power and what they bring with them.00:00 Why Leaders Start Wars03:10 Dark Tetrad in Power06:05 Ego Escalation Pattern07:25 Moral Disengagement Explained09:03 AI Weapons and Distance13:38 Violence Beats Complexity14:56 Groupthink and Sunk Costs17:20 Corporate Violence via AI20:53 What Real Leadership Is22:29 Fixing the Selection Problem24:58 Closing Thoughts ★ Support this podcast ★
- 1 weeks ago19 min
Fear, Politics, and Getting the Science Right: Terror Management Theory Revisited
Terror Management Theory, Replication, and How Science Updates What We Think We KnowDr. Leslie Poston discusses Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a framework for understanding how death anxiety shapes social and political behavior, and uses it to illustrate how science updates its conclusions as evidence changes. She contrasts open replication with cases like Dan Ariely's retracted work. She traces TMT from Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death to early experiments showing harsher punishment after mortality reminders, explains the anxiety buffer (worldview, self-esteem, relationships) and proximal vs. distal defenses, and reviews findings linking mortality salience to prejudice, nationalism, consumerism, and support for confident leaders. She then covers replication challenges, including Many Labs 4, competing re-analyses, independent failed replications, and a major meta-analysis showing publication bias likely inflated the effect. Alongside TMT, she reviews neuroscience and physiology research on threat sensitivity and political ideology, which shows smaller but consistent associations. The episode connects constant ambient threat in modern media and authoritarian rhetoric to these dynamics and discusses buffering strategies like bolstering self-esteem, relationships, shared humanity, and recognizing fear priming.00:00 Welcome and TMT Introduction 00:47 Dan Ariely and Bad vs. Good Science 01:34 Ernest Becker and The Denial of Death 03:05 The First Mortality Salience Study 03:52 How TMT Works 05:31 Death Cues in Daily Life 06:41 What the Research Found 09:28 Threat Sensitivity in the Brain 11:31 Replication and Re-analysis 13:42 Understanding Publication Bias 14:46 What We Actually Know 16:58 Why This Matters Now 17:46 What Helps 18:28 Science as an Updating Process 19:00 Outro ★ Support this podcast ★
- 2 weeks ago23 min
The Personality Test Industrial Complex: The MBTI Problem
Why MBTI Took Over Corporate Culture Despite Weak Science, and What to Use InsteadDr. Leslie Poston traces how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator became a multi-million-dollar corporate fixture despite decades of research challenging its psychometric quality, from Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers' Jung-inspired typology to its commercialization by the Myers-Briggs Company. The episode outlines core problems with the MBTI, including poor test-retest reliability, arbitrary binary categorization despite normally distributed traits, and weak predictive validity for workplace outcomes. Poston covers why it still feels accurate through the Barnum/Forer effect, motivated reasoning, preference for simple categories, and social identity dynamics reinforced by online communities and corporate incentives. She contrasts the MBTI with evidence-based personality science such as the Big Five and HEXACO, notes the growing commercial availability of validated tools, and examines why the MBTI persists through ease of use, positivity, institutional inertia, and cultural saturation.Participate in Our Latest Research Project! Click Here. Not your thing? Share the link!00:00 MBTI Everywhere01:31 Origins and Jung03:30 The Business Machine04:33 Reliability and Validity Issues07:55 Why It Feels True12:27 Big Five and Better Models17:04 Why MBTI Still Dominates20:08 What You Can Do22:15 Bigger Lesson and Wrap ★ Support this podcast ★
- 3 weeks ago22 min
Why You're Stuck: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Why Some People Bounce Back: Narrative Identity, Redemption Stories, and Getting UnstuckPARTICIPATE IN MY POST DOC RESEARCH! CLICK HERE.Dr. Leslie Poston explains that resilience after hard experiences often depends less on toughness or event severity and more on the narrative people construct about what happened. Drawing on 30+ years of narrative identity research from researchers like Dan McAdams, she contrasts “redemption sequences” (negative-to-positive meaning) with “contamination sequences” (positive overtaken by negative), noting links to well-being and depression. She cites evidence that narrative is an active ingredient: long-term sobriety predicts redemption framing of the last drink, increases in narrative agency precede mental health gains in therapy, and expressive writing improves outcomes when it creates coherent story structure. She discusses developmental roots in parent-child elaborative reminiscing, the risk of event centrality in PTSD/CPTSD and collective trauma (e.g., post-9/11 America), and how cultural “master narratives” shape which stories feel possible, with cross-cultural differences. Practical takeaways include therapy, structured writing, supportive listening, and reframing adversity as a chapter, plus a note about upcoming paid courses and no ads.SIGN UP FOR PSYBERSPACE® COURSE LAUNCH HERE00:00 Why We Get Stuck01:28 Narrative Identity Basics02:20 Redemption vs Contamination03:47 Stories Change Outcomes06:56 How Kids Learn Stories09:49 When Trauma Becomes Identity11:35 Collective Trauma Filters13:21 Culture and Master Narratives14:39 When Redemption Doesn’t Fit17:12 Practical Tools to Reframe21:24 Closing and Housekeeping ★ Support this podcast ★
- Aug 21, 202622 min
Specimen in a Petri Dish Part Two: Body Control as Political Power
Body Policing as Authoritarian Power: From Fascist Propaganda to TikTok PipelinesIn Part One, we asked who gets to decide what a woman's body should look like. In Part Two, Dr. Leslie Poston follows that question into political history, tracing a line from Mussolini's propaganda offices to the fashion industry to TikTok's algorithm. The distance between fascist body archetypes and a teenage girl's feed in 2026 is shorter than you'd think. Drawing on the work of Sabrina Strings, Da'Shaun Harrison, and Lois Shearing, this episode examines how and why body control has functioned as a tool of authoritarian power, and what makes it so effective at recruiting women and girls today.00:00 Part Two Setup01:16 Fascist Body Archetypes03:49 Fear and Conformity05:03 Racial Origins of Fatphobia07:11 Modern Body Fascism09:33 Fashion Industry Data12:38 Ariana Grande Case Study13:36 Skinny Talk Pipeline17:09 Why It Works Psychologically21:34 Closing Resources ★ Support this podcast ★
- Aug 14, 202621 min
Specimen in a Petri Dish: The Psychology of Public Body Policing
Why Society Feels Entitled to Comment on Women’s Bodies, and the Harm It CausesJenna Ortega sat down to talk about her career. Within a day, the internet was only talking about her body. Dr. Leslie Poston traces this pattern across decades of public scrutiny aimed at women in the spotlight, examines the psychology behind why people feel entitled to comment on women's bodies at all, and looks at what the research says those comments actually do. Part one of a two-part series.PARTICIPATE IN MY POST DOC RESEARCH! CLICK HERE.00:00 Welcome and Setup01:55 Jenna Ortega Scrutiny03:43 Ariana Grande Pattern04:58 2000s Tabloid Era07:11 Why Commentary Persists09:57 Concern Trolling Explained11:28 Parasocial Entitlement12:58 Research on Harm15:21 Stress and Health Effects16:52 Ozempic Culture Shift19:51 Coping and Bigger Question20:52 Wrap Up and Part TwoFor those who asked about reading my dissertation, I made it open access for you. ★ Support this podcast ★
- Aug 6, 202615 min
Be Cringe, Be Free: The Psychology of Refusing to Perform
Be Cringe, Be Free: Authenticity, Shame, and the Cost of Performing the Self"Be cringe, be free" sounds like a joke about dancing badly in public. Dr. Leslie Poston makes the case that it's actually a question psychology has been thinking about for decades: why does being yourself in public feel so dangerous, and can dropping the performance actually change anything beyond your own life? This episode draws on Goffman's front stage and back stage selves, Winnicott's true self and false self, Brehm's reactance theory, Gilbert's social rank theory, Tangney's research on shame and guilt, Gilovich's spotlight effect, Meyer's minority stress theory, Keltner's work on embarrassment, and Deci, Ryan, and Neff on autonomy and self-compassion, to ask what it actually costs to keep performing, and what it takes to stop.00:00 Be Cringe Be Free01:07 Life as Theater02:48 True vs False Self04:37 Reactance and Pushback06:14 Where Cringe Fear Comes From08:04 Spotlight Effect Reality Check09:03 Minority Stress and Real Risk10:23 Embarrassment vs Defiance11:57 Autonomy and Self Compassion13:57 Freedom as Collective Change14:33 Outro and Research InviteLINK TO PARTICIPATE IN DR. POSTON'S NEXT RESEARCH STUDY: https://bit.ly/4fCx52d (linked form will deactivate when study is full) ★ Support this podcast ★
- Jul 30, 202617 min
Gotcha Culture: Why Catching an AI Cheater Feels So Good
The Psychology Behind AI Call-Outs and False CertaintyDr. Leslie Poston examines why people react with such gleeful certainty when an AI detector flags someone's writing, even though these tools are wrong often enough to falsely implicate one in five students in a single class. The satisfaction people feel rarely tracks whether the accusation is true. It tracks something else entirely, and this episode breaks down five distinct psychological motives hiding underneath that feeling, from protecting a shaky self-image to genuine hypocrisy to anger that belongs somewhere else altogether. Along the way: why detectors fail the way they do, what several centuries of public exposure rituals have in common with a modern callout post, and how to catch yourself doing this before you hit send.00:00 Why AI Callouts Feel Good01:08 Schadenfreude and Deservingness03:10 Algorithms Reward Accusations04:19 Five Motives Behind Callouts04:27 Downward Comparison Relief05:31 Imposter Syndrome Trigger06:28 Secret Users and Hypocrisy08:08 Moral Grandstanding Performance09:00 Misdirected Anger at AI10:03 Why Detectors Fail12:12 Historical Parallels and Exposures14:33 How to Respond Responsibly17:06 Closing and Subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★
About PsyberSpace - we help you understand your world
PsyberSpace® is a weekly psychology podcast for curious people who want to understand why the world feels the way it does, online and offline. The show helps you name what you’re seeing and feeling, understand the science behind it, and figure out what to do next. If you've ever wondered what makes "reply guys" tick, why we fall for emotionally manipulative language in politics, why meetings suck, why comfort can keep us stuck, why limerence hits so hard, or how music and media reshape your brain, you’re in the right place. New episodes drop every Monday to help you understand your world a little better each week. PsyberSpace looks at how psychology, media, and big systems shape everyday life. Some weeks it’s algorithms, AI, and social platforms; other weeks it’s work culture, gender and power, climate anxiety, grief, or the way capitalism sets the baseline for what “normal” looks like. Each episode breaks down how these patterns show up in real people’s bodies and minds—and what you can do to respond with more clarity, care, and agency in your own life, work, and community. 2025 Webby Award Honoree 2026 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee 2025 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee 2024 Women in Podcasting Award Nominee
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