16. Brock Bastian: Pain, cooperation, and the benefits of difficulty

Brock Bastian is a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne whose research focuses on pain, happiness, and morality.  

In this conversation, we talk about Brock's work on how and why pain is meaningful. We talk about Brock's work on pain and cooperation, reproducibility in social psychology, his books The Other Side of Happiness, the value of doing shit jobs, Brave New World, and much more.  

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. New conversations every other Friday. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).  

Timestamps  
0:00:05: Pain and cooperation  
0:18:22: When is a paper ready?  
0:22:37: Reproducibility: when can you trust a paper?  
0:28:44: Discussing the making of Brock's book The Other Side of Happiness  
0:42:39: When should something be easy and when is it good for something to be difficult?  
0:52:59: Brock's dog adds a valuable comment  
0:54:01: The value of doing shit jobs  
0:57:23: What's dystopian about Huxley's Brave New World?  
1:03:23: Is something like Soma possible and would people use it?  


Podcast links  

• Website: https://bjks.buzzsprout.com/  
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BjksPodcast  

Brock's links  

• Website: http://www.brockbastian.com/  
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=WudErsQAAAAJ  
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/drbrockbastian/  

Ben's links  

• Website: www.bjks.blog/  
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=-nWNfvcAAAAJ  
•  Twitter:  https://twitter.com/bjks_tweets  

References 
 Bastian, B. (2018). The other side of happiness: Embracing a more fearless approach to living. Penguin UK.   
Brock's debate with David Pearce: https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/b5578a55839c4218a03c2a43e83f4076 
Bastian, B., Jetten, J., & Ferris, L. J. (2014). Pain as social glue: Shared pain increases cooperation. Psychological Science. 
Bastian, B., Jetten, J., Thai, H. A., & Steffens, N. K. (2018). Shared adversity increases team creativity through fostering supportive interaction. Frontiers in Psychology. 
Huxley, A. (1932). Brave New World. 
Leknes, S., & Bastian, B. (2014). The benefits of pain. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 
Wiltermuth, S. S., & Heath, C. (2009). Synchrony and cooperation. Psychological Science. 
Xygalatas, D., Mitkidis, P., Fischer, R., Reddish, P., Skewes, J., Geertz, A. W., ... & Bulbulia, J. (2013). Extreme rituals promote prosociality. Psychological Science.