The Psychology Podcast

Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D. is board certified in clinical child and adolescent psychology, and serves as the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Director of Clinical Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his research have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, the LA Times, CNN, U.S. News & World Report, TIME magazine, New York magazine, Newsweek, and elsewhere. In his latest book Popular: The Power of Likeability in A Status-Obsessed World, Prinstein examines how our popularity affects our success, our relationships, and our happiness—and why we don’t always want to be the most popular. In our conversation we cover this and more, with key themes being: Why seeking popularity is actually a basic human need, Why it's not always the "conventionally popular" people who fare best, and how this relates to the (2) different strategies for achieving popularity: Likeability Status How studies can help explain b