Group Think

How do the groups you identify with shape your sense of self? Do they influence the beer you buy? The way you vote? Psychologist Jay Van Bavel says our group loyalties affect us more than we realize, and can even shape our basic senses of sight, taste and smell.

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Group Think

/ September 21, 2021

How do the groups you identify with shape your sense of self? Do they influence the beer you buy? The way you vote? Psychologist Jay Van Bavel says our group loyalties affect us more than we realize, and can even shape our basic senses of sight, taste and smell.

If you like our work, please consider supporting it! See how you can help at . And to learn more about human behavior and ideas that can improve your life, subscribe to our newsletter at .

Additional Resources

Book:

The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony, Jay Van Bavel and Dominic Packer, 2021.

Research:

Building social cohesion between Christians and Muslims through soccer in post-ISIS Iraq, Salma Mousa, Science, 2020.

Can exposure to celebrities reduce prejudice? The effect of Mohamed Salah on islamophobic behaviors and attitudes, Salma Mousa, American Political Science Review, 2019.

From groups to grits: Social identity shapes evaluations of food pleasantness, Leor Hackel, Géraldine Coppin, Michael Wohl, Jay Van Bavel, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2018.

Identity concerns drive belief: The impact of partisan identity on the belief and dissemination of true and false news, Andrea Pereira, Elizabeth Harris and Jay Van Bavel, PsyArXiv, 2018.

Social identity shapes social valuation: Evidence from prosocial behavior and vicarious reward, Leor Hackel, Jamil Zaki, and Jay Van Bavel, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017.

Core disgust is attenuated by ingroup relations, Stephen Reicher, Anne Templeton, Fergus Neville, Lucienne Ferrari, and John Drury, PNAS, 2016.

See your friends close and your enemies closer, Yi Jenny Xiao and Jay Van Bavel, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2012.

Minority influence, divergent thinking and detection of correct solutions, Charlan Jeanne Nemeth and Julianne Kwan, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2006.

Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies, Robert Cialdini, Richard Borden, Avril Thorne, Marcus Randall walker, Stephen Freeman, and Lloyd Sloan, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1976.

Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority,Solomon Asch, American Psychological Association, 1956.

Videos:

Jay Van Bavel: Do Politics Make Us Irrational? TED Ed Talk, 2020.

Jay Van Bavel: The Dangers of the Partisan Brain, TEDxSkoll, 2017.

Transcript

*The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode.
Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.*

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. When Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994, he had big dreams for his bitterly divided country.Nelson Mandela: We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society, a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.Shankar Vedantam: He had spent a lifetime fighting the racist apartheid regime, including more than a quarter century in prison.Jay Van Bavel: He was a heroic figure already by that time. But to many white South Africans, they saw him as a criminal and a terrorist.Shankar Vedantam: This is psychologist Jay Van Bavel. As president of the United South Africa, Nelson Mandela or Madiba as he was known to his supporters, needed to find a way for the people in his "rainbow nation" to see themselves as South Africans first. Other politicians might have turned to speeches and policies, Madiba turned to sports.Jay Van Bavel: He used the rugby world cup, which was being hosted in South Africa. And during the apartheid era, South Africa had been banned from competition. And the South African team was known as the Springboks and they were beloved by the white South Africans and despised by the black population. But what Mandela did was he went out onto the podium, not just as the president, but as a fan, he had the green Springboks captain jersey, and he used it as a way to make a statement that we're one team, we're one country now. And he took a symbol of oppression and used it as a symbol of togetherness.Shankar Vedantam: The Springboks' team captain, Francois Pienaar, remembers the moment Madiba walked into the team's locker room. It was before the finals against New Zealand.Francois Pienaar: He said good luck boys and they turned around. And my number was on his back and that was me. I couldn't sing the anthem because I knew I would cry. I was just so proud to be a South Africa that dayShankar Vedantam: The match was a nail biter. It went into overtime. South Africa ended up winning 15 to 12. Across the country, black and white South Africans cheered together in triumph. Nelson Mandela knew that getting enemies to cheer for the same sports team was only a start. Much work remained to heal the wounds of apartheid. But his intervention revealed how a psychologically astute leader can find ways to create connections among people, even bitter enemies. This week on Hidden Brain, how group identities bring us together, tear us apart, and transform our understanding of the world.Shankar Vedantam: When we think about what we do and why we do it, we often assume we are acting intentionally and autonomously. I do something because I want to do it. I choose to do it. In recent years, social scientists have shown that this is often untrue. Our actions, our preferences, the very way we see the world is filtered through the prism of our group identities. This idea has fascinated Jay Van Bavel for a long time. He's a psychologist at New York University. He has studied how our group loyalties pull us together, how they tear us apart and how we can apply what we have learned about the science of group identity to build better lives and better communities. Jay Van Bavel, welcome to Hidden Brain.Jay Van Bavel: Thanks for having me.Shankar Vedantam: I want to start by talking about some of the ways in which our group identities can draw us together with other people, Jay. You grew up in Canada and I understand your parents told you to sew the Canadian national flag onto your backpack. Did you ever find yourself bonding with other Canadians when you traveled overseas?Jay Van Bavel: Yeah. So this is a great piece of advice you learn if you're ever going to travel in Canada. Your family, your friends will tell you to sew a Canadian flag on your backpack so that it serves as a signal to other people in other parts of the world who you are and where you're from. Canada's a reasonably well liked and respected country, but it does something even better, which is it allows you to connect with people. So I was actually on my first ever i

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Original source

📄 salah_draft4.pdf