#Dr maya shankar husband professional#

Maya continued, “I will say, one lesson I learned from this experience is when you are venturing potentially into a new space, and you’re trying to use the resources that are within your community, the opportunity might not exist. Maya explained, “tThere’s this insight in cognitive science called the sunk cost fallacy, and it does lead us to irrationally cling to things that we put a lot of time and effort into because we don’t want to experience the costs of departing.” She explained, though, that even when the Obama administration created a job especially for her, there was some quiet lingering fears about pivoting into a new path. So, with the help of a few mentors to help her discern the next step, Maya pitched herself to the White House to create a job that would perfectly align with where she wanted to go - the intersection of behavioral science and policy. Maya spent the early parts of her post-doc career working in a windowless lab, and though she enjoyed her line of study and the field she put so much time into learning, she realized that the version of it she found herself in was not the version she wanted. She’s been a practitioner in the field ever since. She credits that book for introducing her to the field, and she went on to study it in college, earning her PhD and post-doc in cognitive neuroscience.

#Dr maya shankar husband professional#

“This kind of bias can exist in adolescents because it can also persist into adulthood, and it can emerge in response to just feeling really anxious about uncertainty or change.”Īs she explored where her life would go if it wasn’t into becoming a professional violinist, Maya had her first big a-ha moment when she found a book about cognitive science in her parent’s basement. “It refers to the fact that we can commit ourselves to an identity, a very specific identity, without having explored all the other options out there and it can lead us to feel really fixed in that identity,” Maya explained. What she knows now is that she was experiencing what cognitive science calls identity foreclosure. She’d always categorized and identified herself as a violinist and suddenly, without warning, her identity was shattered. When Maya’s very early violin career ended with an injury, she became despondent. When confronted with a major life or career change, how do we manage and thrive? Are humans today more or less change averse? And if you think you’re “bad with change”, what can you do about it? Identity Foreclosure Shankar is on Goal Digger to explore the sometimes stress-inducing topic of change. And she recently launched her own podcast called, A Slight Change of Plans.ĭr. Her career milestones are nothing short of impressive - from convincing the White House to create a job for her to her work in human behavior and decision-making at Yale, Oxford and Stanford. Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who studies how our minds work and how we change. But that major change led to an entirely different career, one that centers on the very thing she struggled with - change.ĭr.

It was an incredible loss - her passion and identity as a classical violinist crumbled. She was well on her way to a career as a classical violinist, studying under a prestigious mentor at Juilliard School, when a career-ending injury changed the course of Maya Shankar’s future.