Jordan B. Peterson is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto and a clinical psychologist with two main areas of study: the psychology of belief, including religion, mythology and political ideology; and the assessment and improvement of personality, including the prediction of creativity and academic and industrial performance.

After completing his undergrad degree at Grande Prairie College and the University of Alberta, Dr. Peterson earned a Ph.D. in psychology at McGill in 1991 and was a post-doc at McGill's Douglas Hospital. In 1993, he joined the psychology faculty at Harvard. He moved to the University of Toronto in 1997. His work has been funded by SSHRC, CIHR and NSERC (major Canadian granting agencies), and the Rotman Business School Center for Integrative Thinking. He was nominated for the Levenson Prize at Harvard in 1998 and by TVO each year from 2005-2008 as one of Ontario's Best University Lecturers. He also serves as an essayist and panelist for TVO's The Agenda, a well-known Canadian current-affairs program, and is a popular source of information for other media outlets, including TVO's Big Ideas, which has televised five of his lectures.

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.