ABOUT
Emlen Metz is a Public Education Specialist at UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science, where she develops curricula on scientific critical thinking for undergraduate and high school audiences and conducts research on students' reasoning about science and knowledge. She works in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team led by Saul Perlmutter (Nobel Laureate in Physics) and is part of the Lawrence's SEPUP curriculum development group.
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She grew up in Berkeley, graduating from Berkeley High in 2005, earning a B.A. with high honors in philosophy and psychology from Swarthmore College in 2009, and completing a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Her doctoral advisor was Jonathan Baron, the editor of the open-access journal Judgment and Decision Making; while at Penn, she also worked closely with Angela Duckworth, Michael Weisberg, Deena Weisberg, and Phil Tetlock.
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"Philosophic study means the habit of always seeing an alternative, of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid again, of imagining foreign states of mind."
-William James
EDUCATION
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Lay Epistemology
Why are there such large differences in beliefs about scientific theories like evolution and climate change? What role do beliefs about the nature of knowledge and explanation play in forming and evaluating judgments? How do people interpret disagreement, and how do they adjust their beliefs in light of new evidence or arguments?
2011-2017
University of Pennsylvania
PhD in Psychology
Concentration in Psychology of Epistemology and Judgment and Decision Making
Advisor: Jonathan Baron
Masters Student in Philosophy (Concurrent)
Concentration in Philosophy of Science
Advisor: Michael Weisberg
Open-Mindedness and Pluralism
Many people value open-mindedness as a crucial facet of good thinking. What role does this disposition really play in problem-solving and belief formation? How does it change as we grow up?
Measurement of Cognitive Dispositions
To study cognitive dispositions like open-mindedness, skepticism, and reflectiveness, we require good measures. All measures will be flawed, but can a wider variety of quantitative and qualitative measures give us a better handle on the nature of cognitive dispositions?
2005-2009
Swarthmore College
Bachelor's of Arts in Philosophy and Psychology
with High Honors
Concentrations in Cognitive Psychology, Ancient Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, & Philosophy of Language
Phi Beta Kappa