I have previously taught Principles of Reasoning (Ohio University), in addition to grading and advising students in the Moral Cognition Lab (Greene) and Mental Control Lab (Wegner) Research Seminars at Harvard.

I think of my teaching as entirely continuous with my research. One of the main jobs of a teacher is to help students realize that their intuitive theories about how the world works are often misleading, and that a bit of reflection and careful observation can help to bring their theories more in line with reality. This is true in biology and physics, where intuitive theories based on essentialism and impetus have been replaced through reflection and careful observation by more accurate theories based on evolution and inertia.

I believe the same goes for psychology. For instance, we're intuitively apt to believe that we have direct access to the psychological causes of our decisions. However, a large body of literature in contemporary social and cognitive psychology casts doubt on this claim. Reflection and careful observation can help us to override the intuitively appealing idea of direct access, and to replace it with a more accurate conception of how the mind works. One of the things I can do as a psychology teacher is to help facilitate such changes in my students' intuitive beliefs about how the mind works, thereby helping them to have greater control over their own minds, and perhaps to make better decisions as a result.