The Science of Personality Podcast

Allan Church, PhD, co-founder and managing partner of Maestro Consulting and a former PepsiCo talent executive, joins hosts Jackie Sahm and Blake Lepp to examine where AI can help talent management and where it risks amplifying weak practices. The conversation argues that organizations should clarify purpose, measurement content, tools, and decision use before automating, with particular caution around assessment, feedback, ranking, and career decisions. 
The three also examine where AI can and cannot support talent management, leadership assessment, and succession decisions. They argue that predictive models can reproduce historical survival and bias rather than reveal future potential, and that psychological expertise, critical thinking, and human judgment remain essential for setting strategy, validating measures, and governing how talent data is used.
Connect with Allan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allanchurch/ 
Chapters 
00:00 Meet Allan Church, PhD
05:05 Church’s AI adoption cycle: intrigue, hype, panic, reality
08:45 Why automation reveals talent-process misalignment
14:45 Where AI can support talent work, and where it should not lead
20:08 AI across selection, development, succession, and onboarding
25:39 Why algorithmic rankings can look scientific without valid content
28:37 What AI misses in Hogan feedback and personality interpretation
31:33 The 40-page AI report that contradicted expert assessment
33:35 Why feedback depends on context, disconnects, and human judgment
37:51 Match the tool and feedback approach to the purpose
39:22 Easy-button AI risks: accuracy, credibility, and privacy
40:33 Promotion prediction may measure organizational survival
43:15 Why executive performance ratings can be contaminated
45:30 Assess future capabilities, not just historical success
49:00 Define and measure leadership content with expertise
51:18 A digital-leadership model tests what leaders actually value
54:58 Sycophantic AI and the need for value-based judgment
56:56 Rethinking the nine-box approach to potential
01:02:32 Peer influence can become a leadership derailment
01:05:02 Why messy organizational data resists simple equations
01:08:20 Where AI fits - and which roles still need human judgment
01:09:32 The expertise paradox: automation can erase the talent bench
01:12:19 AI-generated assessments and the risk of commoditized science
01:17:27 How practitioners can tell research from pseudoscience
01:21:45 Four principles for responsible AI in talent management
01:23:54 Allan on introversion, practice, and building confidence

Why are we drawn to what scares us? Jackie Sahm and Blake Loepp talk morbid curiosity with Dr. Coltan Scrivner at America's Most Haunted Hotel, the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in this spooky season episode of The Science of Personality.
 
Dr. Coltan Scrivner is a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, a horror entertainment producer and consultant to Hollywood horror productions, and the author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away, the book that put morbid curiosity on the map.
Take the Morbid Curiosity Test
Buy Coltan's Book Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away
 
Timestamps: 
00:00 Welcome to America's Most Haunted Hotel + meet Dr. Coltan Scrivner
 08:58 What is morbid curiosity?
 11:08 Building the Morbid Curiosity Scale: the four types
 19:30 Take Coltan's Morbid Curiosity Test: what the scale predicts
 27:19 The paranormal subscale: agent detection, not belief in ghosts
 29:00 Why some people can't stand horror: disgust sensitivity and anxiety
 32:03 Horror as "homebrew exposure therapy": how scary stories calm anxiety
 43:03 The evolution of morbid curiosity: predator inspection
 48:00 Does morbid curiosity change with age?
 51:21 Dark minds, soft hearts: are horror and true crime fans less empathetic?
 1:00:12 Lightning round: scariest movies, Darwin, and life in Eureka Springs
 1:09:08 Bigfoot, ghosts (real or imagined?)
 1:12:40 Why we're drawn to dangerous people, and promote them into leadership
 1:25:56 What makes the Crescent Hotel America's most haunted hotel

In the latest episode of The Science of Personality, Blake and Jackie kick off the annual spooky season episodes with a very special guest who they had no idea until just recently was a bit of an expert on the topic of witches and witchcraft. As part of some of her coursework at Harvard, Hogan CEO Allison Howell researched this topic extensively, making her the perfect guest to chat with us on a subject that has intrigued, fascinated, and terrified people across the globe for centuries.

In the latest episode of The Science of Personality, Blake and Jackie are joined by Christopher Duffy, Hogan's director of strategic accounts, and Jennifer Lowe, Hogan's director of solution delivery and learning, for a fascinating journey through Hogan history and lore. Having a combined nearly 60 years of Hogan experience, Chris, Jennifer, and Jackie have worked directly with some of the world's largest organizations, and this episode explores their favorite client projects, their biggest challenges, and their favorite tales from their time at Hogan.

In the latest episode of The Science of Personality, Blake and special cohost and guest, Jackie Sahm, talk about the things we get wrong about people. Jackie has spent her entire career at Hogan, starting as an intern while in the IO psychology program at the University of Tulsa. From there, she worked her way up to consultant, then to Hogan’s director of global learning, and eventually landing in her current role as Hogan’s VP of integrated solutions. Over the course of that journey, Jackie has seen just about every challenge an organization can face when it comes to people and talent development. In this episode, Blake taps into that knowledge and experience with a wide variety of questions that shine a light on what we get wrong about people