So what happens when your partner isn’t a person—it’s an AI agent? As humans increasingly use AI systems to make economic and social decisions, this isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer, based on our new research, may surprise you: people don’t simply refuse to cooperate with AI. Instead, the social norms that ordinarily guide cooperation lose their power.

The Game: How We Tested Human–AI Cooperation

We used a classic decision making task from behavioral economics called the Public Goods Game. It works like this: you and three partners each get $8. You decide how much to put into a shared pot. Whatever goes in gets doubled and split equally. If everyone contributes generously, everyone benefits. But there’s a clear incentive to free-ride—keep your money while others chip in. In fact, this is the best solution if you are pursuing pure self interest.

Before each round, participants predicted how much their partners would contribute. Then they made their own decision. Afterward, they saw what everyone actually did. This prediction step turned out to be crucial.

We randomly told some participants their partners were other humans. Others were told their partners were AI systems. Critically, the partners’ actual behavior was identical (we controlled it), so any differences in cooperation between human and AI partners were entirely driven by what participants believed about who they were playing with.

Norms Moved People Less When the Partner Was AI

In Study 1 (N = 794), we varied two things: whether participants played with AI or human partners, and whether those partners behaved generously (prosocial norm) or stingily (antisocial norm). In a previous paper we simply manipulated these norms and found that they doubled the rate of cooperation!

The crucial result was not that people refused to cooperate with AI. In fact, overall cooperation levels were similar regardless of partner type. There was no main effect of playing with an AI versus a human. What differed was how strongly social norms shaped behavior.

When partners were human and behaved generously, participants followed suit, contributing significantly more than when norms were generous. But when partners were AI, this prosocial boost was weaker (see Figure 2 below). The same generous behavior from partners produced less reciprocity when people believed those partners were machines. Put simply: norms that reliably drive cooperation between humans lost much of their force when AI was involved.

Norms Failed Because People Couldn’t Predict What AI Would Do

Why did norms lose their grip? We suspected it had to do with prediction. Social norms work by giving us a reliable map to navigate our social environment: “in this context, people will probably do X”. If that map is messy or hard to read, norms can’t do their job.

That’s exactly what we found. People were systematically worse at predicting AI behavior than human behavior—their prediction errors were significantly larger. They also showed a directional bias, tending to overestimate how much AI partners would contribute.

But this wasn’t a social learning problem. When people saw what their partners actually did and got feedback, they updated their expectations just as efficiently for AI partners as for humans. The error-driven learning machinery in their brain worked fine. The problem was in where they started: their initial mental model of AI behavior was miscalibrated from the outset.

This suggests that the cooperation deficit with AI isn’t about trust, algorithm aversion, or disliking machines. It’s about predictability. When people can’t form accurate expectations about a partner’s behavior, the social norms that sustain cooperation fail.

Describing AI as “Goal-Directed” Closes the Gap

If the problem is a miscalibrated mental model, can we may be able to fix it by giving people a better one? In Study 2 (N = 314), we used the same game but added a simple manipulation: we changed how we described the AI partner.

Some people were told the AI operated mechanistically (executing stochastic decision rules). Others were told the AI was intentional (capable of forming goals, making plans, and adapting its behavior). This is a psychological lever known as the “intentional stance”: the idea that humans naturally predict other people’s behavior by attributing goals and beliefs to them.

The results were striking. When AI was described mechanistically, the familiar cooperation gap appeared: people contributed less to AI partners than to human ones (a difference of about $0.47 per round). But when AI was described as intentional, the gap vanished entirely, contributions to AI and human partners were statistically indistinguishable (see Figure 4 below)

The same pattern held for prediction accuracy. Under mechanistic framing, people had larger prediction errors for AI—especially in prosocial contexts. Under intentional framing, the AI–human prediction gap disappeared.

The Underlying Process is Calibration, Not Learning

We dug deeper into exactly how intentionality framing worked. It didn’t make people learn faster or pay more attention to feedback. Once people saw a discrepancy between their prediction and reality, they corrected course equally well regardless of their partner. Instead, intentionality framing corrected the systematic bias in initial expectations. It gave people a better starting model of how AI would behave. The stochastic noise in their predictions was unaffected.

In other words, the bottleneck in human–AI cooperation is calibration, not learning. People don’t have a broken learning mechanism for AI. They have a broken starting map.

What This Means for the Future of Human–AI Collaboration

These findings flip the usual narrative about how to improve human–AI interaction. Much of the conversation focuses on making AI more trustworthy, more likable, or more human-like. Our work points to a different lever: making AI more predictable.

If people can form accurate expectations about what an AI system will do, social norms engage and cooperation follows naturally. This doesn’t require giving AI a face or a personality. It requires making AI behaviorally legible, helping people build a working mental model of how the system operates. In practice, this could mean designing AI systems that communicate their goals (“I’m prioritizing fairness in this allocation”), provide transparent behavioral histories, or adopt interaction patterns that invite mentalizing rather than mechanical reasoning.

However, there’s a tension here worth flagging. While intentionality framing improved cooperation in our studies, it could also lead to over-trust or the misattribution of human-like moral agency to systems that remain fundamentally algorithmic. The goal isn’t to trick people into thinking AI has a mind. It’s to give them the right cognitive tools to predict its behavior.

As AI takes on increasingly collaborative roles, from team-based work to shared economic decisions, the question isn’t just whether people will trust AI. It’s whether they can read it well enough for the norms that sustain collective action to do their work.
This post was drafted by Laura Globig with edits from Jay Van Bavel. Here is our Working paper — any feedback is welcome!

News and Updates

Jay was interviewed about our book on NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast this week. He responded to questions from listeners of the podcast about identity, groups, and intergroup relations:

Jay will be giving a talk on “Why Outrage Goes Viral: Influence, Identity, Polarization” live in Brooklyn, NY on August 6th at 6pm. This is part of the Lectures on Tap series where professors, experts, and storytellers give thought-provoking lectures in NYC bars. Get your ticket here and enjoy a conversation over a drink with Jay after the talk! Let him know if you are a newsletter subscriber.

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We also now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month.

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We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. It’s also an ethical chatbot (as you can see below, it blocked Dominic from attempting to blackmail Jay). Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from chatting about research, career advice, professional dilemmas, to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. At our July meeting, multiple people showed up and we designed a study together explore how people update their beliefs.

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Catch up on the last one…

Last week, we shared results from a different experiment that used AI to evaluate 26 books with potential to bridge political divides. Two books were chosen for a human trial where researchers will see if reading nonfiction books can reduce polarization and other prosocial traits.

The Power of Us

Can AI Help Us Find the Books That Bridge Political Divides?

Last fall, we proposed a simple research question: can reading the right nonfiction book make people less polarized and more compassionate toward those who see the world differently…

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13 days ago · 12 likes · 3 comments · Rémi Thériault and Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

Learn more about THE POWER OF US

If you like our newsletter, we encourage you to check out our award-winning book “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”. You can learn more about the book or order it from the links on our website (here or scan the QR code below).

This matters because books are unusually scalable interventions. They are already written, widely available, and easy to bring into classrooms, workplaces, reading groups, or people’s daily routines. Yet nonfiction books written explicitly to change how people think and act have received far less scientific attention than fiction. That left us with a practical question: among all these plausible books and chapters, which ones should real people read first?

Our project quickly ran into a practical problem. There are numerous books about empathy, identity, moral disagreement, and bridging divides, each containing many chapters. A serious research project requires time, money, participants, and author permissions. We did not have the resources to ask hundreds of people to read every promising candidate. Before testing a book, we needed a principled way to choose the most promising book(s) for reducing partisan animosity.

We decided to reach out to potential authors and give them an opportunity to participate in a friendly competition: we would run simulations using artificial intelligence to determine which books had the biggest potential impact. The simulations would narrow the field, and real readers would determine the winner.

AI as a First-Round Reader

We use large language model simulations not as a substitute for people, but as a filter to help select the books that might be most effective. There is promising precedent for this approach. In a recent paper at Nature (preprint), our former NYU colleague Ashwini Ashokkumar and colleagues found that GPT-4 simulations correlated strongly with results from actual social science experiments (r = .85), even for unpublished studies. The models tended to overestimate effect sizes, but the approach was extremely effective for determining which treatments would work best.

That limitation shaped our strategy. First, we ranked books and chapters rather than treating simulated effect sizes as literal forecasts. Then we looked for consensus across models, reducing the chance that one model’s quirks would determine the winner. The goal was not to declare that a book “works.” It was to find the candidates with the most promise for real world testing (which will be very expensive and time consuming).

We assembled a pool of 26 prosocial nonfiction books using expert input, AI suggestions, author recommendations, permissions, and through personal contact with authors. We got author permission to use these books and ensured they were not used for training purposes by commercial models. We also included several control nonfiction books, like nutrition book How Not to Age, to ensure the models were providing null estimates where appropriate, and added Power of Us into the mix.

The final list of books (with authors in parentheses) were: (1) Facing the Fracture (Tania Israel); (2) Lovingkindness (Sharon Salzberg); (3) Beyond Your Bubble (Tania Israel); (4) I Never Thought of It That Way (Mónica Guzmán); (5) Why Are We Yelling? (Buster Benson); (6) The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt); (7) High Conflict (Amanda Ripley); (8) Love Your Enemies (Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman); (9) A Heart as Wide as the World (Sharon Salzberg); (10) War for Kindness (Jamil Zaki); (11) Hope for Cynics (Jamil Zaki); (12) Be You (Cirak); (13) Outraged (Kurt Gray); (14) God Is a Conservative (Cirak); (15) The Evolution of Cooperation (Robert Axelrod); (16) Klan Whisperer (Daryl Davis); (17) Power of Us (Jay J. Van Bavel and Dominic J. Packer); (18) Moral Tribes (Joshua Greene); (19) Blueprint (Nicholas A. Christakis); (20) The Better Angels of Our Nature (Steven Pinker); (21) The Expanding Circle (Peter Singer); and (22) Why Nations Fail (Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson).

The control books were: (23) Jerks at Work (Tessa West); (24) Job Therapy (Tessa West); (25) How Not to Age (Michael Greger); and (26) The Brass Check (Upton Sinclair).

Then, chapter by chapter, we asked several models to simulate American Democrats and Republicans (using an R package Remi developed, called nalanda). Each simulated reader rated their warmth toward both parties, “read” a chapter, and rated them again. Our outcome was the change in affective polarizaton—the warmth gap between political ingroup and outgroup. A smaller gap after reading made a chapter more promising as an intervention.

To reduce randomness, we used fixed seeds and temperature 0 wherever supported (gpt-5-mini only supports a temperature of 1). The process was still messier than it sounds. Some models refused to adopt a partisan identity (presumably for safety reasons), others flagged particular chapters, and repeated runs varied because of cost and interrupted jobs. We treated these outputs as a screening signal, not a precise estimate of what a human reader would feel and you should take the effect size estimates with a grain of salt. Before combining models, we first examined what an individual model seemed to say, with GPT-5 mini below as a case example. You can see that Facing the Fracture appeared to be the most effective at reducing affective polarization.

We then examined the results at a finer level. The next figure shows how the simulated chapter effects differed for Democrats and Republicans across six illustrative books. This view reveals possibilities that a single book average can hide, but it is also noisier and more sensitive to the model and chapter selected. It also shows that one of our control books (How Not to Age) had no impact on affective polarization for either party. This is an important sign that our simulations are not reacting selectively to relevant content.

The AI Models Agreed Until They Didn’t

Then came one of the most interesting questions in our investigation: did the AI models agree with one another?

They agreed most on the broad choice of book and less as the decision became more specific. Across the five models used in our primary consensus, the average pairwise correlation was r = .68 at the book level, but only .48 at the book-by-chapter-by-party level. In other words, the models agreed more about which books to read than about what chapters to prescribe to a reader.

One model, GPT-4o mini, barely tracked the others. Rather than quietly averaging all six together, we based the primary ranking on the five models that showed meaningful convergence and kept the sixth as a useful warning: “an LLM result” is not a single, interchangeable thing. Consensus does not guarantee that the five models are correct, but disagreement is information too.

The Books That Rose to the Top

Three books rose most consistently to the top of every simulation: Tania Israel’s Facing the Fracture and Beyond Your Bubble, and Sharon Salzberg’s Lovingkindness. Other books about moral conflict and social repair also ranked highly, including I Never Thought of It That Way, Why Are We Yelling?, High Conflict, The Righteous Mind, and Love Your Enemies.

A Ranking Is Not a Decision

The AI model ratings were our strongest signal, but not our only criterion for selecting a book. A book also has to be readable, practical, engaging, and capable of supplying at least one excellent chapter. We standardized each dimension to a common scale and combined them in a weighted rubric.

Some of these criteria were straightforward. We used audiobook duration as a proxy for how long each text would take to read (although participants in our study will read the books, not listen to the audiobooks). Every book also received credit for the standardized score of its strongest chapter, and we used Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite to estimate chapter readability.

Others required more invention. The reader score combined star ratings from Amazon and Goodreads with review volume, rewarding books that were both well received and widely read. For the polarization score, we analyzed review language in 1,000-token segments using the Negative Affective Polarization Dictionary. This captures polarized reactions among readers, not whether the book itself is “polarizing.”

The broader rubric produced a useful result: Facing the Fracture and Lovingkindness tied for first place (weighted score = .87). Rather than elevating one over the other, the expanded criteria confirmed them as a shared top tier after feasibility, readability, reader response, and review language were added. That convergence gave us a clear reason to test both.

Testing two active books also makes the pilot a genuine second round of the competition. With only one, human data could tell us whether that chapter beats the controls, but not which finalist performs better. The contrast also matters beyond the competition: Facing the Fracture speaks directly to the political realities of the United States, whereas Lovingkindness offers a more general approach to intergroup interactions and is available in translation. If they prove equally effective, Lovingkindness may be easier to apply across countries.

From Books to Chapters

The finalists point toward two different psychological routes. In Facing the Fracture, Chapter 4, “Correct Distorted Perceptions,” ranked highest. It targets a well-known problem in political conflict: people often imagine the other side as more extreme and hostile than it really is. In Lovingkindness, Chapter 6, “Breaking Open the Loving Heart,” offers a complementary route by cultivating concern beyond one’s usual circle.

Now, the Human Test

Round two of our study will involve roughly 1,000 U.S. adults in a planned one-hour online pilot. They will be randomly assigned to read one of the two finalist chapters, read the “Diet” chapter from Michael Greger’s neutral nutrition book How Not to Age, or take a smartphone break. The reading groups will also see a short video summary and complete a chatbot-guided reflection.

We will measure political warmth, behavioral choices involving political ingroup and outgroup members, open-mindedness, identification with humanity, and related democratic attitudes and behaviors. The deeper hypothesis is that a book can widen the reader’s sense of “we,” helping people see themselves not only as Democrats or Republicans but as members of communities that cross the political divide. The pilot is planned for the end of summer, and its preregistration is in progress.

What Comes Next

If the pilot identifies a promising candidate, the final round of our study is a 10-week randomized controlled trial in which participants will read daily excerpts and listen to weekly podcasts on the book contents. A study of that scale depends on securing substantial new funding. Readers who know a promising funder or research partner are very welcome to contact us.

The real test now belongs to human readers. But the simulations have already improved the experiment: instead of choosing a book through guesswork, reputation, or convenience, we have two finalists supported by several distinct forms of evidence.

This project also raises a larger question: what can we really conclude from research comparing fiction and nonfiction as tools for changing how people think and relate to one another? We will take up that debate in a future newsletter.

Have a book you think we should test? Share it in the comments, by email, or through our dedicated survey.

Author note: Rémi Thériault is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Cooperation at New York University and an incoming Assistant Professor at the University of Quebec in Rimouski (UQAR). More at remi-theriault.com. A lot of people also made this work possible: Benjamin Choi, Bella Goldstein, Androw Ramy, Robin Shanholtz, Anna-Celine Guilas, Steve Rathje, Laura Globig, & Jay Van Bavel.

If you want more research bulletins, practical handouts, and behind-the-scenes updates on our polarization studies, upgrade to paid and support The Power of Us.

News and Updates

The same psychology that allows us to build vibrant communities, organizations, and nations is also what drives us apart. In this talk at the 2026 Mind & Life Institute Jay explained why identity is one of the most powerful forces shaping human behavior — for cooperation and for conflict alike. Drawing on decades of research, he revealed how something as simple as being assigned to an arbitrary group can spark favoritism toward "us" over "them," and how those same identities can be reshaped toward broader, more inclusive belonging. He also discussed how modern technology, like social media, is shaping these very basic aspects of human social psychology in perverse ways — often bringing out the worst in us, rather than the best. You can now watch the full talk here:

Jay will be giving a talk on “Why Outrage Goes Viral: Influence, Identity, Polarization” live in Brooklyn, NY on August 6th at 6pm. This is part of the Lectures on Tap series where professors, experts, and storytellers give thought-provoking lectures in NYC bars. Get your ticket here and enjoy a conversation over a drink with Jay after the talk! Let him know if you are a newsletter subscriber.

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We also now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month.

Talk to the “Power of Us Chatbot”

We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. It’s also an ethical chatbot (as you can see below, it blocked Dominic from attempting to blackmail Jay). Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from chatting about research, career advice, professional dilemmas, to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. At our July meeting, multiple people showed up and we designed a study together explore how people update their beliefs.

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Read the last newsletter…

There’s one week left to Turi Munthe’s book giveaway for Why We Think What We Think. Check out last week’s newsletter to enter the drawing!

The Power of Us

You Didn’t Choose All Your Beliefs

Why do some people believe in ghosts but not God? Why do liberals tolerate pineapple on pizza more than conservatives? Why do descendants of rice farmers tend to think differently from descendants of wheat farmers? We like to imagine our beliefs are chosen carefully, through deliberation. But many of them are shaped by forces we barely notice. In a new book titled…

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17 days ago · 18 likes · 14 comments · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel and Turi Munthe

Learn more about THE POWER OF US

If you like our newsletter, we encourage you to check out our award-winning book “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”. You can learn more about the book or order it from the links on our website (here or scan the QR code below).

Why We Think What We Think explains why people disagree about so much. Rather than suggesting our beliefs are fixed, the book argues that understanding social influences can create more intellectual humility (the recognition that our beliefs may be wrong) and help us be better equipped to engage with people who see the world differently. Through this lens, Turi explains several unusual patterns of beliefs: descendants of rice farmers tend to hold different values than descendants of grain farmers, physical appearance influences economic beliefs, and environmental conditions shape preferences for different forms of leadership. He argues that we shouldn’t take our ideas too seriously because many of them — even our deepest convictions, from politics to morality to religion — are the product more of circumstance than of careful deliberation.

Turi a writer and former policy analyst, has spent years mapping the hidden foundations of belief. He founded Parlia, an encyclopedia of opinion that developed tools to help people better understand the foundations of their beliefs. For us, the book raises a deeply social-psychological question: when our beliefs feel personal, moral, and self-evident, how much of what we think is really inherited from the groups, environments, and institutions that we inhabit?

In this interview, we Turi explains:

• why people disagree so deeply

• how geography, ancestry, and institutions shape belief

• whther genes and brains influence ideology

• and what it means for persuasion, tolerance, and democracy

You can learn more and buy a copy of Why We Think What We Think here. To save 10% off through Bookshop, use the code WHYWETHINK10!

Turi is also giving away a free copy — see the details at the end of the interview to enter the drawing.

What does your book teach us about social identity or group dynamics?

Social identity influences many of our behaviours, but it’s also a fundamental driver of many our beliefs. In fact, many of our opinions ONLY make sense as expressions of social identity. That’s weird, because we think of ideas as being primarily useful for their epistemic function — we judge them on their truthfulness. But many of our deepest held beliefs really only perform a social function. We hold certain opinions to compete with our peers — virtue-signalling, for example. We hold others to show we’re special — ‘luxury beliefs’ (beliefs that only some people can afford – like ‘defunding the police’), for instance, or conspiracy theories which allow those who believe them to feel superior to the ‘sheeple’ who haven’t seen the truth.

But the most important social function of our ideas is related to belonging. Humans are social creatures, and can’t survive alone: we are constantly trying to signal that we’re included. It’s why religions command us to believe literally unbelievable stories. Subscribing to the belief that Jesus walked on water or that Moses parted the Red Sea or that Muhammad flew to the heavens on a winged mule is the conceptual equivalent of growing your hair long over your temples for orthodox Jewish men, or wearing a veil for conservative Muslim women — they are outward displays of commitment and loyalty to the group.

The old line that ‘people prefer to be wrong together than right alone’ isn’t an indictment of humanity’s intelligence, but rather proof that ‘belonging’ is almost always more important to our survival than being ‘right’.

What is the most important idea readers will learn from your book?

There are three key ideas that I think are important, and particularly important today in our hyper-polarised world.

1. We shouldn’t take our ideas too seriously because many of them — even our deepest convictions, from politics to morality to religion — are the product more of circumstance than of thought. They are dependent not on our reading, or our life experiences, or our reasoning, but on the culture of our ancestors, the geography of the places we grew up in, the shapes of our faces and our brains, and our genes. None of which we have the slightest control over.

2. Our political instincts are evolved. What we call right and left-wing attitudes are behavioural tools that are best adapted to different environmental circumstances. Right-wing attitudes serve us best in times of threat. Left-wing attitudes serve us best in times of opportunity. The most successful societies are those in which both cohabit and bring the fruits of their differing approaches to the collective: the right protects while the left can innovate.

3. We are better at thinking together than alone (even when we’re drunk, as I show in the book!). Human reason evolved around the campfire, in conversation and argument. The idea of the lone genius is a myth, because all the best ideas come from intellectual conflict. That is why the top university towns are all quite small and quite dense, why the best research is often done by teams of academics, and why parliamentary democracy — where policies are thrashed out in the cauldron of public debate — is the least bad of all political systems.

But those three ideas all boil down to one core idea: as thinking individuals and as societies trying to improve out lot, we need the other side. Our intellectual adversaries across politics, ethics or even disciplines are actually our greatest asset.

What is one statistic or study in your book that everyone should know?

That if you put a 17 year-old in a brain scanner, you can tell their politics with 70% probability. The brains of leftwingers and rightwingers, even relatively young ones who haven’t built up decades of experience of the world, are noticeably different. Differences in the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex predict whether we lean right or left.

It’s a pretty definitive demonstration that our ideas aren’t separate from ourselves, that thinking isn’t somehow abstract, but embodied and specific to each of us. Here are seven more surprising stories behind opinions and beliefs:

What will readers find provocative or controversial about your book?

Most of us are prepared to accept that culture plays a role in the formation of our ideas, or that geography, climate or psychology might influence our values and beliefs. But there is something deeply disconcerting about the notion that our opinions might have their roots in our biology, that we can be genetically predisposed to ideas. What about intellectual agency? Is freedom of thought limited by our own bodies?

Talking about ideas in the language of biology or genetics is also extremely dangerous. It can, and has led people to pathologise ideologies and ways of thinking, to talk of them in the language of illness and aberration. The Nazis saw communists as deviants, the Soviets ‘rehabilitated’ their political enemies with heavy psychiatric treatments, and liberals after WW2 tried to pathologise Fascism as a psychological maladaptation.

But there IS a link between our opinions and our genes. Our biologies don’t predetermine our thinking, but they do predispose us to certain worldviews. Thinking of ideas in their biological context might instead de-pathologise them.

Genetics should help us recognise that diversity of thought is ‘natural’. It might help us recognise religious belief or atheism, or left-wing or right-wing attitudes, not only as ‘moral choices’ but also as natural dispositions. It should help take the sting outrage and moral disapproval out of the way we judge the other side. The communist and the libertarian, the tradwife and the ecowarrior, the peacenik and the hawk are all natural expressions of our human diversity.

Do you have any practical advice for people who want to apply these ideas?

Think of the people you disagree with as partners - the Rafael Nadal to your Roger Federer. The competition between the two of them elevated not only their own practice, but the very game of tennis.

The best thinking has often happened in the interplay between intellectual opponents. Think of Watson and Crick, or Kahneman and Tversky, or Van Bavel and Packer ;-). We think best when we think in conversation because argument is the way humans evolved to reason. Thinking is a contact sport. It goes against our conciliatory instincts, but we should do all we can to put ourselves in argument’s way.

🎁 Book Giveaway Details 📖

To enter Turi’s book giveaway, either…

1. Be a paid subscriber to the newsletter. Paid subscribers are automatically entered into all our monthly book giveaways!

   You can subscribe or upgrade your subscription below.

2. If you are not a paid subscriber yet, make sure you have a free subscription and simply leave a comment answering the question below:

   Which of the seven surprising stories behind our opinions and beliefs stood out to you and why?

3. This giveaway is open worldwide. Enter before July 28th, 12 pm PST. One winner will be selected at random and will receive an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com.

News and Updates

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We also now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month.

Talk to the “Power of Us Chatbot”

We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. It’s also an ethnical chatbot (as you can see below, it blocked Dominic from attempting to blackmail Jay). Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from chatting about research, career advice, professional dilemmas, to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. At our July meeting, multiple people showed up and we designed a study together explore how people update their beliefs.

Join us! Upgrade your subscription using the button below. Invites to RSVP will be sent via email from powerofusbook@gmail.com.

• August TBA @ EST with Dom

• September 10th @ 3:00pm EST with Jay

• October TBA @ EST with Dom

• November 5th @ 4:00pm EST with Jay

Catch up on the last one…

Last week, we summarized a substack live event hosted with Techno Sapiens where Jay and Jacqueline dicussed multiple findings about the impacts of social media on relationships and mental health.

Learn more about THE POWER OF US

If you like our newsletter, we encourage you to check out our award-winning book “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”. You can learn more about the book or order it from the links on our website (here or scan the QR code below).

and recently discussed the impact of social technology during a Substack Live event. Jacki is a clinical psychologist at Brown and author of the fantastic newsletter “Techno Sapiens”. She takes an evidence-based approach to all the big debates around social media, smartphones, and AI and regularly dissects new studies and the big headlines on her newsletter. We highly recommend subscribing to her newsletter if you are interested in these topics.

On the live event, we discussed what the evidence really says about teen social media bans, detoxes, and the “scalpel” interventions that have surprisingly positive long-term effects. We also dug into why this debate about social media is so polarized on social media. You can watch the full video (above) or read our summary below.

Social media debates have ironically become a perfect example of the problem they’re trying to solve — debate that is polarized, moralized, and dominated by extreme voices. In this live conversation with we tried to do something unfashionable at the moment: be precise about what we know, what we don’t, and what we can do next.

We agreed that social media likely contributes to many harmful outcomes for individuals and society, but effects are often small or multifaceted and the public deserves nuance. But the debate on this topic is overheated because moralization turns complex evidence and real tradeoffs into good vs evil (read this summary of a new study on how AI debates are moralized). And people with the most extreme views end up dominating the discussion online, which crowds out the voice of people who have nuanced or ambivalent opinions.

We also discussed digital detoxes, smartphone bans, and other strategies to reduce the harms of these technologies. We agreed that people have big expectations for bans or detoxes that often don’t bear out, but there are real benefits — one of the biggest reliable gains may be sleep. However, dosage and compliance challenges with the research make any effects hard to detect. This is very challenging research and it likely underestimates any impact of social media.

Our biggest takeaways

1) Our views about the impact of social media have changed dramatically the more we have learned

The initial days of social media were extremely promising. From people connecting with old friends to the push for democracy in the Arab Spring, we thought that this technology would have a largely positive impact on humanity. Yet as we have collected more data and seen the impacts in our personal lives, we have updated our beliefs to have a more negative view of this technology. That said, we both use social media and think it has some positive uses (such as sharing research or connecting with people outside your social network).

2) Social media probably plays some role in mental health—but it’s not the only story

We went into this conversation without knowing what we each believed about the impact of smartphones, social media, and AI technology. But we immediately agreed its hard to argue that something teens (or anyone) do for several hours a day has no impact. And these impacts might be broad and far-reaching, from well being and attention to social connection and sleep. However, we agree that the effect sizes of social media are likely smaller than headlines suggest, and mental health is multi-causal (although social media isn’t the sole or even the primary cause of adolescent mental health).

3) Small effects can matter when billions of people are exposed

We also discussed how a narrow focus on the effect size might be shortsighted. Even if the effects of social media — or detoxes and bans — are modest, the scale of it is enormous, so tiny shifts can still have meaningful population-level consequences. We are approaching 6 billion social media users and people are on these platforms for roughly 2.5 hours a day (which is even higher for young people). The research also shows a number of negative effects across a wide variety of outcomes, whereas other apps and technologies do not. This means that even very small effects can have a very significant impact on humanity.

4) Status quo bias is baked into our debates about tech policy

We put phones into classrooms and platforms into lives without strong evidence of benefits — so requiring overwhelming proof to change policy entrenches status quo bias. It creates a powerful asymmetry between the burden of proof to insert technology into every aspect of our lives versus remove it from our lives. This bias is extremely favorable to tech companies. We should question this bias and perhaps a better approach is to start with a thought experiment: What would we ideally want to do if we were creating a policy from scratch? Would you allow kids to bring phones into the classroom or not? Then test this against the evidence — is there compelling evidence that would overturn this policy? We should be doing this right now with AI and chatbots.

5) People might be resistant to social media bans because of the way the issue is framed.

People have very strong attitudes based on how an issue is framed. The term “ban” might feel extreme since it evokes the notion of a nanny state of the loss of freedom. But most companies (like Instagram and Snapchat) already have policies disallowing kids under 13 from using their platforms. Therefore, the exact same policy could be framed as simply raising the age of use a couple of years. This seems far less extreme and is less of a challenge to the status quo since it builds on an existing policy that has widespread support (we’ve never heard an academic arguing to repeal these company policies—again revealing the power of the status quo and pro-tech implicit assumptions underlying how researchers think about these issues).

6) “We need perfect RCT evidence” is an unrealistic standard for policy

The other problem we discuss is the challenge of doing truly definitive research on the causal impact of technology, like smartphones or social media. Correlational studies in this space are revealing, but the causal direction between social media and well-being could go in either direction. Therefore, people often call for clear RCT (Randomized Control Trial) experiments. But these studies are extremely difficult to conduct and create clear results because they are extremely expensive, suffer from selection bias and drop-out problems, occur for a very short period of time (often a few weeks), and it’s hard to confirm that we have completely eliminated social media for people (e.g., even if we remove if from their phone, they can often still access it from a laptop or desktop computer).

7) Individual “detox” strategies are a weak test because social media is a group phenomenon

To date, most studies that have examined the impact of removing social media for individuals. But this is a highly limited approach. If you log off but your peers don’t, you can become socially excluded and this alone might reduce your mental health and increase anxiety. This is why school-wide or national policies may change behavior more effectively than isolated individual choices. By requiring an entire community to log off, no one faces the cost of social ostracism. The current bans are allowing scholars to finally analyze some of these impacts at the collective level.

8) The most efficient interventions may be “scalpels,” not sledgehammers

There is a great deal of debate about the efficacy of social media bans (like the teen bans in the UK, France, Greece, Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia). One of the most promising findings we discussed: our research finds that unfollowing a small number of highly polarizing accounts (and following more uplifting/educational accounts) reduced partisan hostility and increased positive emotion — especially awe — with effects lasting up to 6 months. The reason these effects persisted is because many participants continued to unfollow these accounts after the study was over. Presumably they realized that removing these accounts had a positive impact on their information diet. This works because a tiny group of extreme users dominate the discussion and often post relentlessly. These folks might be ruining the experience for other users and unfollowing them permanently.

9) AI chatbots may be introducing new problems into our social lives

There is evidence that chatbots are highly sycophantic and they get increasingly positive the longer we interact with them. This is damaging our relationships and we found that it is making us more extreme in our beliefs. We need to create chatbots that will make people feel seen without reinforcing their biases. In the short term, you should change the settings on your chatbot to avoid undue flattery.

Let us know if you want us to do other substack live events with other authors. Tell us your favorite authors and debate or discussion topics and we will try to set some of these events up for subscribers.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our live video—join us for our next live video in the substack app.

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News and Updates

Jay will be speaking at the Human Advantage conference by Ipsos. The event will explore how we preserve democracy, harness AI responsibly, build thriving organizations, and drive meaningful change on October 1-2, 2026. It’s a free immersive online event with leaders in behavioral science and top practitioners in policy and industry. You can explore the program and register here.

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from chatting about research, career advice, professional dilemmas, to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. At our July meeting, multiple people showed up and we designed a study to explore how people update their beliefs.

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In case you missed our last Column

Since the U.S. turned 250, we explained the bright and dark side of national identity:

Learn more about THE POWER OF US

If you like our newsletter, we encourage you to check out our award-winning book “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”. You can learn more about the book or order it from the links on our website (here or scan the QR code below).

America’s 250th anniversary was meant to be a moment of shared national pride. Instead, it arrives at a time when national pride itself has become a source of conflict. The question is no longer simply whether people love their country, but what kind of love that is.

In honor of the 250th anniversary of signing the Declaration of Independence in the U.S., today’s newsletter unpacks healthy and harmful forms of national identification and how they shape the world in profoundly different ways.

The Many Faces of National Pride

National pride can take different forms. At its best, it reflects a real bond with one’s fellow citizens and a commitment to the country’s values: a healthy, secure national identity. But national identity can also be unhealthy, superficial, and image-obsessed. A prominent example of the latter is called national narcissism.

In Caravaggio’s famous painting of Narcissus, a handsome youth who tragically falls in love with his own reflection. According to Roman poet Ovid, Narcissus is unable to tear himself away and eventually dies of his passion for himself. In an era of looksmaxxing, this doomed loop of vanity feels especially relevant.

Like Narcissus staring at his own reflection, collective narcissists* are preoccupied with their groups image. For example, national narcissists see their country as exceptional and entitled to special treatment.

Beneath the bravado is a fragile need for validation: when others fail to admire their nation enough, they become resentful. This is what differentiates them from people with a healthy national identity. They both feel attached to their own nation (as shown in the image below). But while true patriots don’t shy away from constructive criticism of their own nation, national narcissists are hypersensitive to any sort of critique and perceived disrespect.

Importantly, national narcissism and healthy national identity also have some similarities. For example, both share a focus on the nation and a generally positive view of the national group. Studies find that measures of healthy and narcissistic identity are correlated (around r ~ .40). Yet when we look more closely and tease apart their defining traits, the differences are striking.

In one study, researchers asked people whether they would be willing to conspire against fellow citizens if they held power, for example, by wiretapping them or spreading false information. At first, strong national identification seemed linked to greater willingness to conspire against ingroup members—which is a bit of a shocking behavior for people who say they truly care about the group.

But here’s the twist: once the researchers disentangled the healthy form of national identification from the narcissistic one (by putting them both in the same analyses), they found that people who felt a genuine bond with their nation were actually less willing to conspire against fellow citizens. National narcissists, on the other hand, were the ones willing to wiretap and lie. In short, these types of social identity predicted the exact opposite pattern of results.

The Zeitgeist of National Narcissism

What was once a quieter undercurrent of national narcissism is now deeply woven into the fabric of American politics. In a forthcoming paper, led by Stefan Leach, Jay and colleagues analyzed 226,900 Twitter posts from members of the 117th U.S. House of Representatives (2021-2023). Social media posts expressing healthy national identity—highlighting national pride and positive feelings about America—were common across party lines and generated more likes with 98% of Republicans and 99% of Democrats expressing it at least once (although Republicans expressed it slightly more frequently). In other words, healthy identity rhetoric is generally appealing across the political spectrum.

But what about messages expressing national narcissism? Post that portrayed America as exceptional and entitled were also common (we called them defensive expressions of national identity in this paper)—particularly among Republicans. Over 75% of Republicans used national narcissistic rhetoric at least once, compared to 36% of Democrats. And those posts really resonated with their audiences: they received 60% more likes. Democrats, however, didn’t see any bump in engagement from using national narcissistic rhetoric. In fact, a follow-up study suggests this kind of language could even harm Democrats at the polls.

The rise of national narcissism, however, isn’t unique to America. We found similar patterns when we studied politicians in the UK. National narcissistic sentiment has seeped into political life across many countries and has particularly benefited right-wing populists. For example, national narcissism was linked to support for the right-wing populist Law and Justice party in Poland and to voting in favor of Brexit in the UK.

National Narcissism on Beliefs and Behaviors

As democracies around the world face growing threats, distinguishing healthy and unhealthy forms of national identity is critical. One thing many people get wrong is that the threat does not come from national identity itself. A healthy bond with one’s country can support trust, solidarity, and civic engagement. The danger comes from defensive, image-obsessed identity.

National narcissism is linked to anti-democratic behavior such as challenging legitimate elections, skepticism toward science and environmental protection efforts, greater hostility toward marginalized groups, and lower solidarity with refugees.

National narcissists are also more susceptible to conspiracy theories, particularly those targeting out-groups. We studied 56 countries and found that, in the vast majority of them, national narcissism was associated with stronger belief in COVID-19 conspiracies (see figure below). In contrast, a healthy national identification was linked to lower belief in such theories. Political ideology was completely uncorrelated with these beliefs, revealing that this is not an issue or right-wing or left-wing political beliefs. You can visit our website to see which countries score highest on the national narcissism and conspiracy theory scales.

National narcissists also frequently fear getting the shorter end of the stick, even when they are objectively privileged. This helps explain why national narcissists often support pulling out of international collaborations, like the European Union. And when national narcissists perceive their country as threatened or insulted, they are also more willing to endorse extreme responses like military aggression.

The Solidarity Gap

Ultimately, national narcissism isn’t about the nation. It’s about the self. Research suggests that national narcissism may be a way by which people try to compensate for personal frustrations like feeling helpless. This can explain why national narcissists don’t just lack solidarity with out-groups, they are also quick to turn on their fellow citizens or abandon their country altogether if it benefits them.

The pandemic revealed how this can play out. While some leaders championed working together across national borders, others saw collaboration as a sign of weakness—something national narcissists can’t tolerate. In one set of studies, we found that national narcissists supported reckless public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic when those policies helped their country save face. British national narcissists, for example, tended to oppose the EU–UK ventilator partnership, even when they knew that opting out could put fellow citizens’ health at risk.

The story looks quite different for those with a healthy, secure national identity. In a study across 67 countries, we found that these individuals were more likely to adhere to public health guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. When people feel a genuine bond with their nation, they’re more willing to step up and make sacrifices.

Healthy, Secure National Identity Builds a Stronger Society

A strong national identity in and of itself is not problematic. Quite the contrary. Feeling a genuine bond and commitment to one’s nation can strengthen social ties and greatly benefit society. Embracing a healthy national identity can reduce polarization, foster tolerance, galvanize civic engagement, and encourage solidarity, prosocial behavior, and altruism.

A mega-study of over 30,000 Americans tested the effectiveness of 25 interventions to reduce partisan animosity, support for undemocratic practices, and support for partisan violence. Our lab’s intervention, designed to highlight a positive, shared national identity, was the third most effective strategy at reducing partisan animosity. The effects lasted for several weeks and it also increased support for democratic practices (Voelkel et al., 2024). Reminding partisans of their shared American identity and values can be a powerful catalyst for democratic renewal.

July 4th offers Americans an opportunity to reflect not only on their nation, but on their relationship to it. Despite deep divisions over where the country is headed, the upcoming holiday is also a chance to refocus on what unites rather than divides Americans, to reaffirm shared democratic values, and to nurture a healthier form of patriotism.

Amid the politicization of the 250th anniversary, Bill Maher recently said, “Everybody has to start getting a little more excited for America’s birthday.” The deeper question is not whether Americans should feel excited for their country’s birthday, but what kind of excitement they choose to cultivate: one rooted in celebration, connection, and democratic commitment—or one rooted in grievance, status, and spectacle. How Americans understand their national identity today will help shape the country’s future.

There are lots of recent examples—from Knicks fans to the World Cup—showing how to celebrate a shared identity in the spirit of collective joy. We suggest taking a page from the Norwegians and other countries celebrating their national identity and cheering on their team together (here they are doing the Viking row in Times Square this week)!

Send us your favorite video, image or story of collective joy in the comments—we need better role models about how to celebrate in the spirite of a positive social identity.

This column was drafted by Anni Sternisko, with edits from Jay Van Bavel. Illustrations by Hannah Karsting.

*National narcissism exists on a spectrum. For brevity, we refer to people who score especially high on this spectrum as national narcissists.

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News and Updates

Jay will be speaking at PopTech 30 where the them is CIVIL. The event will explore how neuroscience, psychology, culture, and conflict shape the way we think, connect, and decide together on October 6–8, 2026 in Studio Theatre, Washington, DC Register at civil.poptech.org

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from workshopping research questions, career advice to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. Upgrade your subscription using the button below.

Invites to RSVP have been sent via email from powerofusbook@gmail.com

• June 4 @ 4:00pm EST with Dom

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• August TBA @ EST with Dom

• September 10th @ 3:00pm EST with Jay

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month

Talk to the “Power of Us Chatbot”

We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation.f Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Catch up on the last one

We created teaching materials for educators to help explain social identity, group dynamics, and intergroup relations in a divided world.

Students already understand that identity matters. They see it in politics, online discourse, campus debates, fandom culture, workplace dynamics, and AI-mediated information. This course gives them a scientific framework for understanding why identity can divide people—and how it can also promote cooperation, solidarity, and social change.

We created a free syllabus and supplementary teaching materials for anyone interested in teaching about social identity. This is a chance for people to learn directly from our book, and go beyond to dig into the original research, new studies, and educational videos and podcasts we created. We curated the most relevant articles for each chapter and added new research published since we wrote the book.

Our free educational content package includes:

• Syllabus and course schedule

• Educational videos

• Suggested readings (including debunking famous psychology studies)

• Chapter summaries & key takeaways

• Lecture slides (editable .pptx file)

• Test questions

• Interactive activities/assignments

• Interactive class Q&A with either Jay or Dom

• Newsletters discussing related topics (eg., new content on AI)

Visit this link to request our teaching materials and keep scrolling down for the .word and .pdf links to the syllabus!

The course syllabus is ideal for college students, but can easily be adapted for high school classes and book clubs (e.g., by focusing on on the book and excluding any assignments), organizations (e.g., by removing the academic journal articles and replacing them case studies or practical activities), or advanced academic seminars (e.g., by focusing on the original research articles and requiring an original research project). Be creative and adapt the content for their audience—then let us know so we can share it with others.

How instructors can use these materials

• Full seminar: Teach the entire book across 10 weeks.

• Introduction to psychology module: Use one or two weeks on social identity, group behavior, and cooperation.

• Social psychology course: Pair chapters with classic and contemporary papers.

• Leadership / organizational behavior: Use chapters on cooperation, dissent, and effective leadership.

• Political psychology / media course: Use modules and readings on echo chambers, misinformation, social media, and AI.

We visit the classes of educators who use our teaching materials! In the past few years, we visited several classes at universities around the world. We also did an interactive Q&A with Dr. Helen Harton’s course Influence: Harnessing Psychology to Create a Better World and created a newsletter with our Q&A with students from her class. We did the same thing recently for a large book club at the Social & Affective Neuroscience Institute in Brazil.

To facilitate deeper engagement we now have a mailbox where students can send us questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter roughly once a month. We also created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content from our book, research, and newsletter, and applying it to your own questions (password: _subscriber). Finally, we have monthly “office hours” for premium subscribers.

We will also offer a free premium subscription to the Power of Us newsletter for any educator who assigns our book in their class. This will keep you up to date with new research, book reviews, and educational materials you can use in the future. It will also allow you to join our office hours to discuss any relevant issues.

Our book and teaching material has been used at numerous universities around the world, including Yale University, New York University, University of Southern California, University of St. Andrews, University of Amsterdam, Vanderbilt University, Monash University, University of Porto, University of Northern Iowa, University of Tennessee, Tecnologico de Monterrey, University of the Western Cape, SUNY Buffalo, ISG Business & Economics School of Lisbon, Chapman University, Saint Joseph’s University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Hendrix College, Western CT State University, Soka University of America, Trent University, Carleton University, Northeast Lakeview College, University of North Carolina, and Stevens Institute of Technology among others. Let us know if we missed your school and we will add it to the list.

Course Title: The Power of Shared Identity

Course Description: This course provides an overview of the psychology of shared social identities and their surprising influence on human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Students will learn frameworks for understanding identity and group dynamics from the book The Power of Us. Videos and case studies can be used to analyze effective and problematic uses of identity in achieving cooperation, reducing bias, and fostering social change. Students will apply course principles through projects focused on harnessing the power of shared identities.

Required Text: “The power of us: harnessing our shared identities to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony” by Jay Van Bavel & Dominic Packer. This can be purchased from our publisher or as an audio or kindle book from Amazon. Translations are also available in the UK, Canada, Brazil, Japan, China, Romania, Korea, Mongolia, and United Arab Emirates.

Course Objectives:
By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Explain theories on social identity, social categorization, and intergroup relations

• Analyze how shared identities shape perceptions, beliefs, values, and behaviors

• Assess the role of identity in contemporary issues like polarization, inequality, and climate change

• Evaluate effective and problematic uses of identity in case studies

• Design interventions to leverage shared identity for cooperation, performance, and overcoming bias

Course Schedule: The course is broken into 10 weeks of content (each week focuses on a different chapter from the book). However, the length can be adapted to add exams (e.g., adding two midterms and a final exam turns this into 13 week course) or assignments (e.g., we recommend adding a day at the end for class presentations).

Week 1: The Power of Us

Key topics: What is social identity and why is it powerful? Human needs for belonging, distinctiveness, and status.

• Video: The sibling rivalry that divided a town (The TED-Ed Video includes exam items & further reading)

• Activity: The WHO AM I? Challenge is a virtual tool we created to facilitate the 20 statements test we outline in our book. This will educate people about their own identities—especially hidden identities—and how these are connected to their social relationships. Students can visit the link here to do the class activity, and share their responses with us if they wish.

• Newsletter: Why we are suckers for astrology, the Meyers-Briggs, and other pseudoscientific personality tests? + Debunking the five biggest myths in social psychology

• Suggested readings

  • Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American, 223(5), 96-103.

  • Yang, X., & Dunham, Y. (2019). Minimal but meaningful: Probing the limits of randomly assigned social identities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 185, 19-34.

  • De Cremer, D., & Van Vugt, M. (1999). Social identification effects in social dilemmas: A transformation of motives. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29(7), 871-893.

  • Cohn, A., Fehr, E., & Maréchal, M. A. (2014). Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry. Nature, 516(7529), 86-89.

Week 2: The Lens of Social Identity

• Key topics: Identities shape perceptions, tastes, and attention. Identities can also misdirect and bias.

• Newsletter: What it means to contain multitudes

• Suggested readings

  • Xiao, Y. J., Coppin, G., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2016). Perceiving the world through group-colored glasses: A perceptual model of intergroup relations. Psychological Inquiry, 27(4), 255-274.

  • Pandey, K., Stevenson, C., Shankar, S., Hopkins, N. P., & Reicher, S. D. (2014). Cold comfort at the Magh Mela: Social identity processes and physical hardship. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53(4), 675-690.

  • Kahan, D. M., Hoffman, D. A., Braman, D., Evans, D., & Rachlinski, J. J. (2012). " They Saw a Protest": Cognitive Illiberalism and the Speech-Conduct Distinction. Stanford Law Review, 851-906.

  • Williams, T., et al., (April 1, 2016). Police body cameras: What do you see? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/01/us/police-bodycam-video.html 

Week 3: Sharing Reality

Key topics: Groups influence beliefs through norms and social dynamics. Avoiding groupthink and gravitating toward truth.

• Video: Why do people cling to false beliefs? (Youtube)

• Newsletter: Fighting misinformation with science

• Suggested readings

  • Augenblick, N., Cunha, J. M., Dal Bó, E., & Rao, J. M. (2016). The economics of faith: Using an apocalyptic prophecy to elicit religious beliefs in the field. Journal of Public Economics, 141, 38-49.

  • Tourish, D., & Vatcha, N. (2005). Charismatic leadership and corporate cultism at Enron: The elimination of dissent, the promotion of conformity and organizational collapse. Leadership, 1, 455-480.

  • Van Bavel, J. J. & Pereira, A. (2018). The partisan brain: An identity-based model of political belief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22, 213-224.

  • Robertson, C. E., Pretus, C., Rathje, S., Harris, E., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2022). How social identity shapes conspiratorial belief. Current Opinion in Psychology, 101423.

Week 4: Escaping Echo Chambers

Key topics: Rising polarization and the role of identities. Solutions for bridging identity-based divides.

• Video: Do politics make us irrational? (The TED-Ed Video comes with exam items + further reading)

• Newsletter: Is polarization really a problem? + Can AI help us escape our echo chambers?

• Suggested readings

  • Finkel, E. J., Bail, C. A., Cikara, M., Ditto, P. H., Iyengar, S., Klar, S., ... & Druckman, J. N. (2020). Political sectarianism in America. Science, 370(6516), 533-536.

  • Crockett, M. J. (2017). Moral outrage in the digital age. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(11), 769-771.

  • Bail, C. A., Argyle, L. P., Brown, T. W., Bumpus, J. P., Chen, H., Hunzaker, M. F., ... & Volfovsky, A. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216-9221.

  • Rathje, S., Van Bavel, J. J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Out-group animosity drives engagement on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118, e2024292118

Week 5: The Value of Identity

Key topics: What drives identification? Why people identify with underdogs and value identity symbols.

• Newsletter: Using social norms to clean up your community

• Suggested readings

  • Akerlof, G. A., & Kranton, R. E. (2000). Economics and identity. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 715-753.

  • Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(3), 366.

  • Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., & Van den Bergh, B. (2010). Going green to be seen: status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 392.

  • Hornsey, M. J., & Jetten, J. (2004). The individual within the group: Balancing the need to belong with the need to be different. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(3), 248-264.

Week 6: Overcoming Intergroup Bias

Key topics: The nature and roots of bias across identities. How understanding identities can reduce bias.

• Video: How to reduce discrimination between groups (YouTube)

• Newsletter: Reducing racial bias in the sharing economy

• Suggested readings

  • Acharya, A., Blackwell, M., & Sen, M. (2016). The political legacy of American slavery. The Journal of Politics, 78, 621-641.

  • Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2008). The neural substrates of in-group bias: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Psychological Science, 19, 1131-1139.

  • Mousa, S. (2020). Building social cohesion between Christians and Muslims through soccer in post-ISIS Iraq. Science, 369, 866-870.

  • Murrar, S., Campbell, M. R., & Brauer, M. (2020). Exposure to peers’ pro-diversity attitudes increases inclusion and reduces the achievement gap. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 889-897.

Week 7: Finding Solidarity

Key topics: Shared adversity creates identities and prosocial behavior. Marginalized group solidarity for social change.

• Video: What leads people to help others? (YouTube)

• Newsletter: Debunking the bystander effect

• Suggested readings

  • Levine, M., Prosser, A., Evans, D., & Reicher, S. (2005). Identity and emergency intervention: How social group membership and inclusiveness of group boundaries shape helping behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 443-453.

  • Drury, J., Cocking, C., & Reicher, S. (2009). The nature of collective resilience: Survivor reactions to the 2005 London bombings. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 27, 66-95.

  • Becker, J. C., & Wright, S. C. (2011). Yet another dark side of chivalry: Benevolent sexism undermines and hostile sexism motivates collective action for social change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 62.

  • Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119, 1086.

Week 8: Fostering Dissent

Key topics: Why insiders dissent and how groups can encourage it.

• Newsletter: Debunking the myth that conformity is irrational

• Suggested readings

  • Reicher, Stephen D., S. Alexander Haslam, and Joanne R. Smith. "Working toward the experimenter: Reconceptualizing obedience within the Milgram paradigm as identification-based followership." Perspectives on Psychological Science 7.4 (2012): 315-324.

  • De Dreu, C. K., & West, M. A. (2001). Minority dissent and team innovation: the importance of participation in decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(6), 1191.

  • Packer, D. J. (2008). On being both with us and against us: A normative conflict model of dissent in social groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(1), 50-72.

  • Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Speaking up in the operating room: How team leaders promote learning in interdisciplinary action teams. Journal of Management Studies, 40(6), 1419-1452.

Week 9: Identity Leadership

Key topics: Effective leaders are “entrepreneurs of identity”. Inspiring through identity vs misusing identity.

• Video: How can leaders communicate more effectively?

• Newsletter: Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment + Four things successful teams do differently

• Suggested readings

  • Wang, X. H. F., & Howell, J. M. (2010). Exploring the dual-level effects of transformational leadership on followers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(6), 1134.

  • Steffens, N. K., Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2014). Up close and personal: Evidence that shared social identity is a basis for the ‘special’ relationship that binds followers to leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(2), 296-313.

  • Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2019). Rethinking the nature of cruelty: The role of identity leadership in the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, 74(7), 809-822.

  • Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., Selvanathan, H. P., Gaffney, A. M., Steffens, N. K., Packer, D., ... & Platow, M. J. (2022). Examining the role of Donald Trump and his supporters in the 2021 assault on the US Capitol: A dual-agency model of identity leadership and engaged followership. The Leadership Quarterly, 101622.

Week 10: The Future of Identity

• Key topics: Facing future challenges: identities and inequality, climate change, democratic backsliding.

• Documentary: Protecting Democracy in a Time of Extreme Polarization

• Newsletter: How to talk about climate change and the problem with doomerism

• Suggested readings

  • Mols, F., & Jetten, J. (2016). Explaining the appeal of populist right-wing parties in times of economic prosperity. Political Psychology, 37, 275-292.

  • Yaden, D. B., Iwry, J., Slack, K. J., Eichstaedt, J. C., Zhao, Y., Vaillant, G. E., & Newberg, A. B. (2016). The overview effect: Awe and self-transcendent experience in space flight. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3.

  • Waldner, D., & Lust, E. (2018). Unwelcome change: Coming to terms with democratic backsliding. Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 93-113.

  • Berkebile-Weinberg, M., Goldwert, D., Doell, K. C., Van Bavel, J. J., & Vlasceanu, M. (2024). The differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries. Nature Communications, 15, 3885.

  • Voelkel, J. G. et al. (2024). Megastudy identifying effective interventions to strengthen Americans’ democratic attitudes. Science, 386, 6719.

Please visit these links if you prefer to view and download the syllabus as a .pdf or a word doc. In addition to numerous translations, we also have audio and kindle versions.Our book website includes several reviews if you want to see what other people thought about the book before you assign it.

Finally, we find it useful to offer links to career advice for students in our classes. So we created a single newsletter summarizing all the career advice columns Jay wrote for Science Careers as part of his Letters to Young Scientists column. Feel free to share it with your students.

If you teach a course where this might fit, please use it. If you know someone who teaches psychology, leadership, political science, communication, education, or conflict resolution, please forward this to them. And if you use the materials in class, leave a comment—we’d love to hear what worked and what we should add next year.

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We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation.f Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

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The Power of Us

How scientific fraud roiled the world of social science

In 2012, Harvard Business School Professor Max Bazerman and his colleagues published an influential paper showing that “signing first”— that is, promising to tell the truth before filling out a form — produced greater honesty than signing afterward. Nearly a decade later, several academic sleuths revealed that two of the experiments in the paper were fraudulent, triggering what would become one of the most widely discussed academic frauds of the twenty-first century…

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2 months ago · 15 likes · 5 comments · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

This story was an earthquake in our own field. We had long followed the work of Ariely, Gino, Bazerman and their collaborators on behavioral science and ethical decision making. These were some of the leading figures in the world on these topics and it was a shock when these fraudulent studies were discovered. We have been following the case very closely and think that effectors to address bad scientific practices need far more attention and support.

Max Bazerman’s vivid account offers an inside look at many of these issues in social science. In intriguing details, his book explores recent conflicts and transformations underway in the field, considers the role of relationships and trust in enabling fraud in academic research, and describes Max Bazerman’s own part in the scandal—what he did and didn’t do to stop the fraud in the signing-first paper, what consequences he faced, and what hard lessons he learned in the process.

This book offers a compelling story of fraud and betrayal and provides a deep and ultimately instructive look at how academic research works—and doesn’t—in social science. Given our own interest in the topic, we invited him to share the key lessons from his book. Changing the incentive structures, norms, and sanctions around scientific rigor is the only way we will be able to fully address this issue and restore public trust in social and beahvioral science.

You can buy a copy of Inside an Academic Scandal here. We are also giving away a few free copies — see the details at the end of the interview to enter the drawing.

What does your book teach us about social identity or group dynamics?

Inside an Academic Scandal provides a detailed account of how the publication of a paper about inducing honesty contained two fraudulent studies. Unfortunately, I was a co-author of the paper. I feel responsible for the publication of this fraudulent paper, despite not knowing of the fraud. My sense of responsibility comes from the fact that I could have discovered problems with the data by asking more questions, directly examining the data, and more broadly, providing greater oversight of the work. My failure to verify the data was largely based on trust – a core implicit part of the group dynamics of my lab group.

The book provides details of my relationships with Ariely, Gino and others, and documents how these relationships allowed the data fabrication to go undiscovered for so long. Throughout my career, I generally replied on younger scholars, people who are smarter than me, and people with more contemporary methodological skills. Over time, the dynamics of my lab group led me to move farther away from the raw data in my research.

This diffusion of responsibility in social science research is common; the more senior you become, the further many of us get from the data. While trust, strong relationships, and diffusing responsibility tend to be beneficial to all parties, Inside an Academic Scandal will explore when it is our obligation to trust but also verify.

What is the most important idea readers will learn from your book?

We all have an obligation to provide enough oversight of our research to make the research process robust against any single member p-hacking, engaging in fraudulent behavior, or simply making an error.

What is one factoid, statistic or study in your book that everyone should know?

When your colleague p-hacks or commits fraud, and you ignore it, you are complicit in the wrongdoing!

What will readers find provocative or controversial about your book?

The book discusses the potential need to restructure how we conduct research, how we collaborate, and the importance of our universities in improving data integrity.

The new generation of researchers (“the reformers”) and some journals (e.g., Psychological Science) are deeply engaged in creating more reproducible science. Inside an Academic Scandal recommends new roles for co-authors. The first is to be more responsive to peculiar results. If something seems off or very surprising, co-authors should investigate thoroughly until they fully understand their data. I am sure that some co-authors have effectively implemented this suggestion in the past. I simply think that more of us need to be engaged in following up suspicions. In the Inside an Academic Scandal story, I had hints that something was off in Study 3 of the signing-first paper but was too easily satisfied when a co-author gave me a plausible explanation of the peculiarities that I observed.

Do you have any practical advice for people who want to apply these ideas (e.g., three tips for the real world)?

I recommend that senior scholars encourage co-authors to critically review the basic data provided by the author doing the data collection and the analytics. High-integrity researchers should be delighted to have an extra person review their data and analysis. Anyone who might be tempted to fabricate data would be less likely to do so if they knew someone on their team would be looking at it closely. If researchers can verify that their data was reviewed by a second set of eyes, the paper should have more credibility. A second look would also reduce any honest errors made in the publication process. By making such co-author reviews normal, it also de-stigmatizes the request to review the work of a co-author.

Senior scholars can also encourage their universities to take data replicability more seriously. Too many universities have outsourced the task to the journals. When universities allow questionable research practices, their reputations suffer. It is time for universities to become active participants in the open science movement. They can begin by creating task forces to review their social science research practices and to consider requiring many of the ideas offered by the open science movement.

In the aftermath of data fraud allegations, American universities often close ranks and keep their investigations and decisions secret. When professors have resigned, their universities typically say little about why they did so. Some have speculated that these universities have avoided investigating all of the papers published by the resigning professor, with the exception of retracted papers. American universities also tend to be remarkably slow. I appreciate the need for universities to be thorough and fair to the accused. Universities may also have good legal reasons for these behaviors. But, the slow speed of investigation can also be morally problematic, as delay leaves the professor’s co-authors, the broader research community, and the public less informed than a faster and more transparent investigation could provide. While the investigation meanders along, leakage and rumors occur, often harming innocent scholars related to the inquiry. The need to be fair to the accused must be balanced with the need to keep the accused from potentially committing further fraud, to ensure the integrity of published research, and to protect the intellectual communities that surround the accused, particularly junior colleagues.

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Catch up on the last one…

Last week, we shared a feature-length article on of the life and work of psychologist Ervin Staub

The Power of Us

The Roots of Goodness

This week we are sharing a discussion of psychologist Ervin Staub, a Holocaust survivor who spent his career asking one of the most important questions in social psychology: how cruelty takes hold — and whether kindness can, too. It clearly articulates a theme we return to often: goodness isn’t just a trait — it’s a set of conditions, norms, and practices we can build…

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2 months ago · 12 likes · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

We met Ervin at our very first conference together as graduate students. He was a key speaker at a conference on “Why neighbors kill” in London, Ontario. We hopped on the train and were some of the only students from outside the area who attended the event. We both cornered Ervin and discussed the origins of intergroup violence and he was incredibly gracious and patient with two young, inquisitive graduate students.

This post was originally published on Psyche and authored by Michael Bond. If you like this essay, consider subscribing to Psyche/Aeon as well — few outlets do long-form psychology writing this well.

Many of us want to make the world a better place. It would be hard to find someone more invested in how to go about it than the Hungarian American psychologist Ervin Staub. He has spent his life examining a simple question with vast consequences: how to be good in bad times and encourage altruism in the face of evil. Unusually, he has studied the subject as an academic while also living it close at hand. As a boy in Hungary during the Second World War, he experienced greater extremes of depravity and heroism than most of us face in a lifetime. ‘Sadness and grief well up in me at unexpected moments, when I encounter reminders of the terrible things that were done to other people,’ he writes in his memoir. Yet he remains optimistic about people’s capacity for goodness. ‘I learned … that life does not have to be what the Nazis made it, that there is love in the world, as well as caring and the willingness for self-sacrifice.’

Spring 1944 was a fraught time for all Hungarian Jews, hundreds of thousands of whom were being transported to Auschwitz and other camps. The Nazis had arrived in Budapest – ‘the same Nazis who lined up people on the edge of the Danube, maybe three or four, shot a couple of them, tied them together and pushed all of them into the river,’ says Staub. His first clear memory, aged five or six, is waking in his home in Budapest and hearing noises in the room next door. ‘I have become pretty good at feeling my feelings, but I am not that good at feeling my feelings from that point in time,’ he says. Though he remembers clearly what happened next: ‘I went into the other room. Some people in the family were crying. I was looking at my uncle, who had a rucksack and this pink piece of paper, which was his call-up. And then we said goodbye to him, and that was the last time any of us saw him. Except one person.’

That person was Maria Gogan, a Christian woman who cared for Staub and his sister and three of his cousins throughout their childhood. He describes her as ‘a hero in every possible way’ and the inspiration for much of his work. She visited his uncle in the labour camp and smuggled him one of the letters of protection that the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg had devised to shield Hungarian Jews from the Nazis by granting them de facto Swedish citizenship. (Although it failed in his uncle’s case, Wallenberg’s ruse saved the lives of thousands of Jews, including several of Staub’s immediate family.) Maria helped the family, at great risk to herself, throughout the rest of the war. ‘She took me and my sister into hiding with a Christian family,’ explains Staub, ‘which I remember quite well, going there and going into the apartment.’ When some of the neighbours began to suspect that they were Jewish, Maria moved them to one of Wallenberg’s protected houses. Staub remembers it being packed with Jewish families. ‘People were lying on mattresses in the basement, which was how we started off. Maria started to make bread out of dough, push it in a baby carriage to a bakery, have it baked, pick it up and bring it back, not only for us but also for other people in the house. At some point she was stopped by Hungarian Nazis, and they made her stand with her hands to the wall for a very long time, saying we are going to kill you because you are helping Jews … The next day she was taking bread to the bakery again.’

Years later, when Staub was 18, Maria accompanied him to the Hungarian border during his escape to the West. He recalls that they said goodbye to each other while sitting in a haystack. ‘It was such a wonderful, loving goodbye.’ Since then, he has thought a great deal about her kindness and how she came to be that way. ‘Her mother died. Her father married the fairytale really bad stepmother. For any little thing that her stepmother thought she did wrong, she made her kneel on dried corn, which apparently is quite painful. So she had a very bad history there.’ But from an early age, Maria was hired out to families to care for their children, and with them she experienced something entirely different. ‘She loved the children and the children loved her. And I think that it enabled her to have what I later came to call altruism born of suffering. People who suffer often go on to become violent. But some have experiences that transform that suffering into wanting to protect and help others … [They undergo] an emotional transformation, the realisation that the world does not have to be like this person made it for me, that there are other people who are kind and caring … I think that was very apparent in her case. In all my life – and I spent a lot of time with her from birth to age 18 – and then during my visits, I never saw her do an unkind act, or say unkind things to another person. How many people can you say that about?’

Staub believes that the community he grew up in, in an environment fraught with risk, has shaped his entire life. ‘In the midst of all those horrors I was lucky … I was surrounded by people who loved me and cared for me and did everything they could to protect me.’ (Their dedication may explain his acknowledgement that he ‘was not particularly conscious of pain that I carried from my childhood’). More than anything, they ‘so powerfully expressed values in action’, giving him a touchstone to return to for the rest of his life. He credits Maria’s selflessness, Wallenberg’s heroism and the courage of his mother and aunt not only for his survival, but for his moral outlook, and even his decision to study altruism.

Was there ever a danger, in that extremely hostile setting, that he might have grown in another direction? ‘Possibly I could have chosen a different path,’ he says. He knows others who did, though their home lives were far less nurturing. He has a friend, another survivor of the Holocaust, whose parents sent him to a monastery during the war for his own safety, ‘a Jewish kid among Christian kids’. At the end of the war, no one came to pick him up until weeks afterwards. ‘He asked me at some point, what is the one sentence with which you would summarise your experience of the Holocaust. His sentence was something like, people can be very cruel and you have to do everything you can to defend yourself. My sentence was, even in the worst of times, people can be caring and helpful.’

Some of Staub’s enduring values, and the seeds of his life’s work, are plain to see in his first published papers. In the late 1960s, when he was assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University, the social psychology topic du jour was the counterintuitive finding that people are far less likely to help in an emergency when others are present, a phenomenon known as the bystander effect. Unlike most in his field, Staub was more interested in the people who helped than those who turned away. ‘I wanted to increase caring, helping and goodness so that the terrible things I experienced and increasingly encountered in my work (and saw in the world) would not happen,’ he explains.

In 1970, he built his own series of studies to find out how helping behaviour varied with age. He recruited 232 kindergarten and elementary school children and took them singly or in pairs to a room at the university where they were told they would be taking part in a drawing project. This was a ruse to distract them from the real objective, which was to see how they reacted when a researcher in the next-door room played a recording of a child crying (a scenario, he points out, uncannily reminiscent of his earliest childhood memory). Just as he suspected, the older the child, the more likely they were to investigate the sounds of distress – but this pattern held only until around the age of nine. After that, he found ‘a shocking decrease’ in the extent to which the children would help, back down to the level of kindergarten children. They made excuses such as: ‘If I went in there I might get yelled at’ or ‘I thought I should stay here.’ They’d learned to fear disapproval, he says, something the younger children were apparently immune to.

What Staub remembers most vividly about this set of studies is an incident during a later round in which 12-year-old children had been told they could go into the other room if they needed more drawing pencils. He was watching, through a one-way mirror, a girl who had been listening to the crying for a while and not doing anything. ‘I think, she’s not going to [act] because usually people act early,’ he recalls. But then ‘she jumps up, takes her drawing pencils, breaks the edge off both of them and runs into the other room. So she had to fulfil the conditions of the permission before she went in.’ Staub concluded it was important to teach children that ‘under certain circumstances, for example, when someone needs help, the usual behavioural restrictions do not apply.’ (In a later study, 82 per cent of the children who were given permission ended up helping.)

Despite the particular experience of his childhood, it was not obvious to Staub as a young psychologist that he would spend the greater part of his academic career trying to answer the question at the heart of these studies: why, or under which conditions, do some do good while others look away? In his memoir, Evil, Goodness, and Creating Active Bystandership (2026), he notes that, while at Harvard, he thought little about the connection between his research and his life. ‘For a number of years, I think I did my best to separate the work I was doing from my life experience, albeit unconsciously … Perhaps, also, I was not yet ready to engage emotionally with my early experience … My mode of engagement was, instead, intellectual, but it eventually opened me up emotionally.’ He was, he tells me, simply putting one foot in front of another. ‘I never planned out my way. I was doing what seemed meaningful and valuable.’

At the same time, he sought out people whose lives or work were directly relevant to his own. One of them was Perry London, a visiting professor at Stanford University who was the first to study rescuers – Christians who risked their lives to save Jews in occupied Europe. Staub was intrigued by London’s finding that rescuers shared at least three characteristics. They were adventurous, a correlate to courage. They were socially marginalised – a Catholic living among Protestants, for example – which made it easier for them to defy social norms. Most significantly, they had inherited from their parents a strong moral code that highlighted their responsibility towards others. ‘Perry’s study kind of pushed a switch in me,’ says Staub. ‘I thought, I can study this too.’

Staub’s experiments with children and adults at Harvard and later at the University of Massachusetts would make it clear to him that altruistic behaviour cannot directly be predicted from a person’s personality traits, a common misperception even today. Neither does he think it emerges spontaneously from the dynamics of a situation. Rather, he has found that it stems from the culture or family in which a person grew up – what they have seen others do, or the values those around them have lived by. ‘Even people who have grown up in a hostile environment can become caring and helpful,’ he insists. ‘But there has to be at least one person in their lives who can provide a contrast, and with whom they have a connection. So a child growing up in an abusive family with a father who tells him that he should respond to any challenge with force and aggression cannot grow up that way [caring and helpful]. Research shows that children who grow up in these circumstances will end up in prison for aggression. There have to be experiences that give them a glimmer at least of a different possibility.’

For all his commitment to altruism, Staub’s best-known, most successful and most widely reviewed work is his book The Roots of Evil (1989), an investigation into the psychological motivations and cultural conditions that lead to genocide and inter-group violence. The book arose from his decision, late in the day, to address his turbulent childhood under the Nazis, a subject that he had largely avoided. Up to that point, ‘it was as though my personal and professional lives were running on parallel tracks’. The two finally came together around 1980 when Staub started reading Lucy Dawidowicz’s analysis of the Holocaust, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (1975). ‘As I was reading it, I had the feeling that based on some of my work on altruism and helping behaviour … I have some beginning [of an] understanding of how such a horror could happen,’ he says. He saw that altruism and evil were interrelated. ‘In both cases there is an evolution.’ Just as children learn to be helpful by engaging in helpful acts, perpetrators of violence become accustomed to their harmful behaviour. ‘That is, learning by doing can change people in either positive or negative directions.’ In The Roots of Evil, he offers an alternative perspective to the popular idea that terrible acts are committed by terrible people.

Under extremely difficult life conditions certain motives dominate, Staub writes, among them ‘protecting the physical wellbeing of oneself and one’s family and preserving one’s psychological self, including self-concept and values.’ But it’s hard to accomplish all this by improving the material conditions of life. Instead, people may try to cope psychologically, often by ‘devaluing other groups, scapegoating … and adopting ideologies’ in ways that promote and do not inhibit harm.

While working on The Roots of Evil, Staub began to think for the first time about his father’s experience during the Holocaust. Like his uncle, his father was sent to a forced labour camp (unlike his uncle, he survived). Staub wondered what it was like for his father in the camp and during his eventual escape, events he’d never spoken about. He thought about the terror his father must have felt when Hungarian Nazis searched their house in Budapest while he hid behind a chair. ‘I rarely, if ever, cried about my life,’ he says. ‘But I did cry about my parents’ life. What a life.’

During 1989 – the year The Roots of Evil was published – Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Angola were embroiled in civil wars, South Africa remained under apartheid, and (on 4 June) the Chinese government massacred hundreds of student protesters in Tiananmen Square. It was also the year that communism collapsed in eastern Europe after more than three decades of repression. There was an urgent need to understand the dynamics of mass violence. Staub hoped that politicians and others would use his work to try to prevent the churn of brutality and, specifically, help societies ‘resist influences that turn us against each other’, as he puts it in The Roots of Evil. ‘Well, that didn’t happen,’ he recalls. ‘I felt that nobody was doing anything. I was deeply discouraged because I had the delusion that, having identified what leads to great violence, there will be actions in the world to prevent it. But violence continued.’ At that point, ‘I thought it might be … constructive if I began to take some kind of action myself.’ (Elsewhere, Staub has said of this decision: ‘In a world of suffering, for me, being actively engaged in trying to help was redemptive.’)

The opportunity came soon enough. In 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda instigated one of the most horrific campaigns of violence since the Holocaust, against the country’s Tutsi minority. Up to a million people were killed, many of them by their neighbours, in just 100 days. In the months that followed, Staub began to think about how he might contribute to the country’s recovery. He organised an international conference on the prevention of genocide, at which academics, community leaders and policymakers discussed the pathways to violence and examined evidence from a number of conflict zones such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Tibet (the Dalai Lama was the conference’s principal speaker). The event led to a commitment, backed by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, for Staub to travel to Rwanda to help promote healing, forgiveness and reconciliation among the traumatised population. Stepping off the plane in Kigali in January 1999, he had little conception how deep his involvement would be.

His partner in Rwanda was his partner in life: the clinical psychologist and trauma specialist Laurie Anne Pearlman. The two of them had met in the early 1990s at an academic conference on trauma and violence where he gave the opening address and she the closing one (they are known affectionately by friends as Mrs Trauma and Mr Violence). Over lunch at their house in Massachusetts, Pearlman tells me that after the conference she checked out Staub’s book The Roots of Evil to make sure he’d used the word ‘evil’ appropriately (as a description of an act rather than an individual). Reassured, she met him for a walk, and they began dating. Thirty-three years later, their easy teasing and tender mutual affection give the impression they still are. They share a great deal, including the desire to make a difference beyond their academic and therapeutic practices. Pearlman says that at the time she met Staub she was ‘sitting in these little rooms helping one person at a time. What the heck! While I’m sitting here for 50 minutes with this person how many people are newly traumatised? So I decided I needed to do something to help people on a larger scale.’

Staub’s decision to visit Rwanda, a country in the aftermath of genocide, was bound to be problematic. ‘I am a Holocaust survivor after all.’ The night before they travelled, he had nightmares, one of them a recurring dream relating to the time he escaped from Hungary. ‘I dreamed that I was running through a beautiful green forest and soldiers were chasing me,’ he recalls. ‘I’ve had this nightmare a small number of times.’ He was fortunate to be travelling with Pearlman, who specialises in vicarious trauma – the negative effects of treating other people’s distress. ‘There was one very valuable element for us and that is we were together,’ says Staub. ‘So we could talk about things, we could support each other. I think that was very valuable in terms of mitigating some of what we encountered.’

Nevertheless, the two of them found the experience heart-wrenching and agonising. Staub recalls being shocked at the contrast between the beauty of the landscape (‘green fields, rolling hills, lakes, and valleys’) and the horrors of what happened there.

‘Everybody we saw just seemed depressed, quiet, withdrawn, looking down, there was no feeling of joy, no feeling of community or connection,’ says Pearlman, even though four and a half years had passed since the genocide. Staub thought people looked frozen. ‘There were two or three people sitting here or there, not necessarily talking to each other, just sitting there. There was no kind of flow to life.’

They were witnessing the fallout of an extraordinary situation in which ethnic loyalties were elevated over family ties. Parents had killed their children and husbands their wives. Staub says he found this kind of behaviour ‘totally astonishing’ and ‘almost incomprehensible’. Yet their long experience as psychologists specialising in trauma and violence had given them a framework that helped them make sense of it. ‘We already knew about genocide and what happens,’ says Pearlman.

‘Of course, killing your next-door neighbour or your spouse with a machete is different from what went on in the camps in the Holocaust … I would say it expanded my framework but didn’t disrupt it because already both of us had come to understand the horrors of which people are capable.’

During the summer of 1999, they began sharing their insights into trauma and reconciliation with political leaders, community organisations, journalists and others. In workshops and training sessions, they addressed the subjects that all Rwandans seemed desperate to discuss: the origins of genocide, the psychological impact on survivors, the path to reconciliation, and how to prevent it happening again. Staub recalls that people were relieved to learn genocide is not an inevitable consequence of the human condition, that it is made more likely by a particular set of conditions: political chaos, a long history of conflict, group discrimination, a lingering sense of grievance, and a strongly hierarchical society.

‘Horrendous situations can lead to horrendous behaviours,’ he explains. ‘Because under those circumstances what are people to do? … Everything has collapsed, everything is terrible, people are killing me, killing everybody around me. So people can lose whatever moral compass they may have had … This wasn’t the will of God. People created it and it’s understandable how it came about. That was one of the important elements for us, to understand how it came about. Even the people who did some terrible things you wouldn’t necessarily think of as evil, you would think of as powerfully affected by circumstances. When a whole group of your fellow ethnics are doing these terrible things, it’s very difficult to deviate. If you deviate you might be killed. You are powerfully part of the group.’

The workshops exposed Staub and Pearlman to many stories of tragic loss suffered by Tutsis who survived. Staub remembers, in particular, a woman whose husband had been taken away by Hutu militia. She described to them how a member of the militia, a family acquaintance, sent a Hutu man to her house to protect her. ‘He arrived at the house with a Bible under his arm, stayed in one of the rooms, and when more killers came to the door, he faced them off and saved this woman,’ relates Staub. When the genocide ended, this man escaped from Rwanda, along with many other Hutus. Then a few years later, he came back to visit the woman he had protected. But instead of welcoming him, she decided she couldn’t trust him. ‘This woman said about the person who saved her life, he was a Hutu, I cannot protect myself from him, I can go to the authorities,’ laments Staub. ‘I mean this person saved your life! He stayed with you. He never harassed you.’ For Staub it was a reminder of how traumatic experiences can corrupt people’s capacity to have functional relationships and live normal lives. ‘Isn’t the damage that is done to people just totally flabbergasting?’

In 2004, the reach of their work in Rwanda expanded dramatically with the launch of an educational radio drama, Musekeweya (meaning ‘New Dawn’), which incorporated the key messages from their workshops into a soap opera about two fictional villages in conflict. An evaluation found that people who listened to the drama (a recent poll suggests that 76 per cent of the population tune in every week) were more likely to speak their minds, express controversial views and make decisions independently of authority; they were also likelier to empathise and reconcile with other groups of Rwandans, all of which, according to Staub, would make a return to violence less probable. In 2006, variations of Musekeweya began broadcasting in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; all three dramas continue to this day. All the evidence suggests that Staub and Pearlman have made a real difference. At the very least, they have helped increase the prospects for peace in what has been an extremely unsettled region. ‘As Laurie liked to say, we were just two little peanuts,’ says Staub. ‘It was true, we were just little peanuts. But we were active peanuts.’

One of the key messages of the Rwanda workshops – that people have power to intervene for the good of others (to become ‘active bystanders’) – has been conspicuous in almost all Staub’s real-world engagements, most notably the one that has come to define his legacy in the United States: training police officers in ‘ethical policing’. California’s police department asked for his help after a number of its officers were filmed beating Rodney King as he lay on the ground after a car chase in Los Angeles in March 1991. Staub developed a training programme that encouraged officers to step in whenever a colleague looked like they were becoming overly aggressive towards a civilian, an approach that directly challenged the traditional police culture of allegiance and unity.

While it is unclear whether California ever implemented his recommendations, the principle of active bystandership as a way to reduce brutality was taken up by activists pushing for police reform elsewhere. In 2014, a group of lawyers, civil rights activists and retired and serving police officers in New Orleans began adapting Staub’s recommendations for the city’s police department (the NOPD), which has a long and troubled history of violence towards the community it serves. The previous year, the NOPD had been placed under a federal supervision order, forcing it to introduce extensive reforms. One of the outcomes was that Staub’s active bystandership training – known as Ethical Policing is Courageous (EPIC) – became mandatory for all New Orleans police officers. EPIC has helped reduce the number of aggressive interventions by police in cases of public disorder and has played a critical role in improving police-community relations. As a result of this achievement, some 430 law-enforcement agencies across the US – including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, DC, Boston, Denver and Philadelphia – have adopted their own active bystandership training programmes based on the framework established in New Orleans. Half a century after he started exploring the roots of altruism, Staub’s ideas are transforming the culture in one of the most contentious areas of public life.

Nonetheless, he is realistic about the difficulties of fostering altruism more broadly across society. A short distance from the psychology department at the University of Massachusetts, where Staub kept an office until he retired, a glass display-case houses a 12-foot concrete segment of the Berlin Wall, painted in situ by the French muralist Thierry Noir. This relic of the Iron Curtain is symbolic not only of the postwar oppression that defined much of Staub’s youth, but of the psychological impediments to empathy and reconciliation that he has spent much of his career trying to dismantle.

One of his frustrations is that walls – social, political, psychological – are as prevalent today as they have ever been. He is disappointed, to say the least, by the US president Donald Trump’s ‘destructive ideology’ and his derogation of migrants. ‘What ICE is doing in the US, how cruel they are in capturing and holding people, shows the power of destructive leadership,’ he says. He is appalled by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s treatment of the Palestinians and his refusal to recognise a Palestinian state (on his Substack, he has described Netanyahu as ‘a cancer on both the Palestinians and Israelis’). His preferred antidote to authoritarianism is ‘constructive community engagement’ – though sometimes, he adds, ‘we do need to be heroes’. It is inevitably galling for him, knowing that decency and compassion are achievable, to have to watch the many powerful forces holding it back. ‘I regret that I cannot do more about what’s happening in the world, in America, in Israel … I wish I could do more. Where to enter, where to go? Even people who have much more prominent positions than I have in the world have trouble finding ways to act effectively.’

Staub has come to accept that he cannot save the world by himself. Still, he has indicated how it might be done. He has shown that prejudice is not inevitable, goodness is possible even in the midst of horror, and, in the right conditions, kindness can win. ‘I mean, this whole thing has a logic to it,’ says Staub. ‘People are influenced by their environment and by important people in their lives. Surely it makes sense.’ The central tenet of altruism – the feeling of responsibility for others’ welfare – is, he maintains, ‘a very important moral principle’ that we mostly learn from others, ideally early in life. The people who protected and nurtured him as a child are still his moral benchmark. When Maria Gogan was in her late 80s, Staub went back to Hungary again to see her. ‘We had dinner at a restaurant. [Her] hair was completely white, her head was shaking. I said to her, you know everything that I do in life is because of you. And to my total amazement she said, I know.’

Ervin Staub’s memoir, Evil, Goodness, and Creating Active Bystandership, is published by Köehler Books.

News and Updates

Jay will be having a live conversation on substack with Jacqueline Nesi on June 4th at 4pm EST on the big question: “Is a digital detox really worth it? What tech is doing to our relationships and mental health.” All newsletter subscribers are invited to attend live and join a Q&A session.

Jacki is a clinical psychologist and professor at Brown University who writes the popular newsletter TechnoSapiens. She studies how technology and social media impact mental health (especially for teens), and how parents can help their kids navigate it. Here is is an example of one of her recent posts:

Techno Sapiens

Are school phone bans working?

5 min read…

Read more

3 months ago · 35 likes · 10 comments · Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

Talk to Us

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We also now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month

Talk to the “Power of Us Chatbot”

We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. It’s also an ethnical chatbot (as you can see below, it blocked Dominic from attempting to blackmail Jay). Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from workshopping research questions, career advice to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. Upgrade your subscription using the button below.

Invites to RSVP have been sent via email from powerofusbook@gmail.com

• June 4 @ 4:00pm EST with Dom

• July 6th @ 1:00pm EST with Jay

• August TBA @ EST with Dom

• September 10th @ 3:00pm EST with Jay

Catch up on the last one…

Last week we summarized the top 5 debunked social psych studies.

The Power of Us

Debunking the Five Biggest Myths in Social Psychology

Most people’s memories of introductory psychology center on a handful of classic studies that have seeped into pop culture—experiments that seem to answer uncomfortable questions: Why do people conform? How can humans be so cruel? Why do groups make such obviously bad decisions? Why is it so easy to ignore someone in danger…

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2 months ago · 35 likes · 1 comment · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

These studies get retold endlessly in textbooks, news articles, TV, and social media. Through repetition, they become myths. Few people read the original research, so critical details get lost, underlying lessons get distorted, and follow-up work that clarifies what the studies actually showed gets ignored entirely.

We’ve written about all of these at greater length in previous columns and in our book. What follows is a guide to the biggest myths we keep encountering—covering Groupthink, the Stanford Prison Experiment, bystander intervention, Milgram’s obedience studies, and conformity—along with how researchers currently think about each one. We hope a few of these challenge your assumptions about human nature.

MYTH 1. Groupthink wasn’t the major factor in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion — it was “politicothink”.

The failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion became the classic example of “groupthink,” a theory developed by psychologist Irving Janis. Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon where members of a group prioritize consensus, harmony, and conformity over critical thinking. Janis proposed that pressures for conformity and group cohesion caused President John F. Kennedy and his advisors to suppress doubts and become overconfident about their decision to invade Cuba.

However, additional context unearthed by psychologist Roderick Kramer challenged this interpretation, showing that Kennedy actually had serious reservations about the invasion and felt politically trapped into proceeding. Kramer argued that the real problem was “politicothink,” where leaders prioritized political image over military effectiveness, partially because Kennedy feared criticism from Richard Nixon (the previous administration’s Vice President) if he canceled the plan.

The obsession with groupthink has misled many people about the function and value of groups. Strong group cohesion is not always harmful, since long-term teams with trust and psychological safety are often better at encouraging honest disagreement and critical thinking. Ultimately, effective leadership and healthy group norms are key to preventing poor decision-making in organizations and governments. We wrote about this for the Wall Street Journal.

To read the full story:

MYTH 2: The Stanford Prison Experiment we not about the power of roles — it was about the power of identity leadership.

Perhaps the most famous and controversial study in social psychology was the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment led by Philip Zimbardo. It seemed to show that ordinary people naturally become cruel when placed into positions of power, especially as prison guards. However, nearly half a century after the experiment, the full study notes and new recordings were made available to us and we came to very different conclusions.

Several researchers (Ben Blum, Alex Haslam, Steve Reicher, Thibault Le Texier and Jay) combed through audio recordings and archival evidence revealed that the guards did not spontaneously become abusive. Instead, they were pressured and coached by the experimenters to behave harsher toward prisoners. The study was actually an example of identity leadership, where authorities encouraged guards to see cruelty as part of a shared mission and moral purpose.

The article also highlights the importance of dissent, emphasizing how another Stanford researcher, including Christina Maslach and several guards, resisted the abusive dynamic. Ultimately, the initial interpretation of the Stanford Prison Experiment created a misleading myth about human nature. Cruelty is less often shaped by roles themselves, rather they are more shaped by leadership, social pressure, and the belief that harmful actions serve a greater good.

To read the full story:

MYTH #3: The origin story about the callousness of bystanders was wrong.

The 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese became famous for the news coverage claiming that 38 witnesses failed to help despite hearing her cries for help, inspiring social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané to conduct a series of famous studies and develop the theory of the bystander effect. They argued that people are less likely to intervene during emergencies when others are present because individuals look to the crowd for cues and assume someone else will take responsibility.

Additional details revealed that the story was more complex than originally reported in the news, since some neighbors did attempt to help or contact police, but the lack of a modern 911 system contributed to confusion. Later studies by psychologist Mark Levine found that people are indeed more likely to help others as long as they feel a shared social identity or connection with them. Other research has found that bystander interventions might be far more common overall—possibly because we do share many connections with regular people.

To read the full story:

MYTH 4: The Milgram’s experiments revealed just at much about disobedience as obedience to authority.

In a series of shocking obedience experiments by Stanley Milgram, participants believed they were delivering painful electric shocks to another person simply because an authority figure instructed them to continue. Although Milgram’s studies were long interpreted as proof that humans blindly obey authority, later analyses revealed that obedience depended more on identity and allegiance than mindless conformity.

Researchers discovered that many participants resisted at key moments, especially when the learner first demanded to be released, forcing them to choose between loyalty to the experimenter or sympathy for the victim. In addition, nearly half of the subjects across all of Milgram’s experiments disobeyed the instructions of the experimenter. The story commonly discussed is only a subset of trials. Ultimately, obedience and disobedience are shaped by whom people identify with, showing that humans are not simply passive followers in the face of authority.

To read the full story:

MYTH 5: Conformity does not lead to irrationality—people often know exactly what they are doing.

The conformity experiments of Solomon Asch suggest that many people would knowingly give incorrect answers about simple line comparisons just to match the opinions of a group; folding to the pressures of conformity. Below, you can try the task yourself.

Did you get it right? When students completed the task alone, they almost never made mistakes.

But Asch added a twist. In group settings, everyone except for one real participant was secretly in on the experiment. At key moments, these stooges deliberately chose obviously wrong answers — and the real participant, answering last, had to decide whether to trust their own eyes or go along with the crowd. The results were stunning: 76% of participants conformed at least once! And on average, people went along with the group about a third of the time.

Although these studies were often interpreted as evidence that humans irrationally follow crowds, later research revealed that conformity can also be a rational response to uncertainty. Dom’s experiments involving difficult visual tasks found that people used the opinions of others as valuable information when they were unsure, even without social pressure. Research by Bert Hodges further found that people sometimes resist conformity even when the group is likely correct because they value independence and authenticity. This suggests that conformity reflects a balance between accuracy, belonging, and personal integrity, making it both a powerful social strength and a vulnerability when groups discourage dissent or critical thinking.

LESSONS LEARNED:

These five “myths” all point to the same meta-lesson: the most famous social psych findings are often right about the phenomenon (people conform, obey, ignore, rationalize harm), but wrong about the psychological process.

When you look into the social context, behavior looks less like mindless conformity and more like a product of identity, norms, leadership, incentives, and uncertainty. People don’t simply “become cruel” because of roles; cruelty is cultivated when authorities legitimize it and groups come to see harm as serving a higher purpose. People don’t act like passive bystanders because they don’t care; they hesitate when responsibility is ambiguous and act more when they feel a shared bond. And conformity isn’t always irrational—it can be a social or informational strategy under uncertainty.

The practical implication is optimistic: if bad outcomes aren’t hardwired into human nature, then changing the situation—the norms you reward, the identities you activate, the clarity of responsibility, and the safety to dissent can reliably change what groups do. This is the core message from our newsletter and it is a lesson that becomes clear when you ignore the mythology and stories that go viral and instead dig into the actual details of these studies and historial lessons.

News and Updates

Jay will be hosting a live executive webinar with Laura Kriska on June 3rd at 1pm EST on how “Human collaboration is a competitive advantage”. All newsletter subscribers are invited to attend live and join a Q&A session. Jay & Laura will be discussing their article “4 Research-Backed Ways to Help Your Team Collaborate Better” which was featured in a recent special issue in Harvard Business Review. You can RSVP here to attend.

Jay will be having a live conversation on substack with Jacqueline Nesi on June 4th at 4pm EST on the big question: “Is a digital detox really worth it? What tech is doing to our relationships and mental health.” All newsletter subscribers are invited to attend live and join a Q&A session.

Jacki is a clinical psychologist and professor at Brown University who writes the popular newsletter TechnoSapiens. She studies how technology and social media impact mental health (especially for teens), and how parents can help their kids navigate it. Here is is an example of one of her recent posts:

Techno Sapiens

Are school phone bans working?

5 min read…

Read more

3 months ago · 35 likes · 10 comments · Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

Talk to Us

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We also now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month

Talk to the “Power of Us Chatbot”

We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. It’s also an ethnical chatbot (as you can see below, it blocked Dominic from attempting to blackmail Jay). Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from workshopping research questions, career advice to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. Upgrade your subscription using the button below.

Invites to RSVP have been sent via email from powerofusbook@gmail.com

• June 4 @ 4:00pm EST with Dom

• July 6th @ 1:00pm EST with Jay

• August TBA @ EST with Dom

• September 10th @ 3:00pm EST with Jay

Catch up on the last one…

Last week we shared a preprint explaining how a minority of internet users shape public opinion. Specifically, we trace how social media influencers can turn fringe claims into viral narratives —voften by exploiting a feedback loop between influencers, algorithms, and crowds.

The Power of Us

Tyranny of the online minority

In 2014 there was a sudden outbreak of measles among visitors to Disneyland that spread across California. Renée DiResta was looking for a preschool for her children when she traced this outbreak to anti-vaccine misinformation circulating among moms groups on social media. This discovery led her down a rabbit hole to understand an entirely new ecosystem of persuasion driven by online influencers, algorithms and crowds. According to her book…

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2 months ago · 19 likes · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel and Raunak Pillai

In Edward Bernays’ classic book Propaganda, he described the people who manipulated and ruled over the masses. He argued that a class of “invisible” people shaped public perceptions on behalf of governments and corporations by using intelligent manipulation strategies. According to DiResta, online influencers operate like modern propagandists by leveraging and engineering viral trends to shape public discourse and opinion. These invisible rulers turn misinformation and fringe views into popular narratives that create, echo chambers and bespoke realities. We fully agree with DiResta that understanding these online dynamics can help explain the rise of anti-vaxxers, QAnon, and GameStop stock, which has important implications for public health, democracy, and economics.

Much of Invisible Rulers focuses on the impact of influencers with large social media followings who have the power to manipulate public opinion. Influencers—from TikTok dance video star Charli D’Amelio to right-wing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens—are often dismissed as frivolous or inconsequential. But they are a new class of elites who possess the power to direct attention, evoke emotion, and mobilize crowds. Indeed, our own research suggests that a very small percentage of these influencers generate the vast majority of misinformation and toxic content online. For instance, 0.01% of Twitter/ X users were responsible for the spread of 80% of misinformation during the 2016 presidential election. There is good evidence to believe that influencers can distort social norms or foment political polarization.

Despite influencers’ ability to capture attention and build a connection with their followers, they do not seem to be representative of the general population. A small number of extreme users constantly post fringe opinions which creates the illusion that these views are far more widely held than they really are–which we call the “funhouse mirror” version of reality. Invisible rulers often work together to spread hostile narratives and conspiracy theories, and push more nuanced, knowledgeable, and reasonable voices out of the discourse. For instance, a small number of passionate, but coordinated, anti-vaxxers drive the online narrative, and following these influencers is linked to vaccine hesitancy. While most people in the real world support vaccinations, they are far less vocal online. This allows anti-vaxxers to amplify their message and mobilize the harassment of public health officials, scientists, and policy makers. We experienced this directly when Jay was attacked by a swarm of anti-vaxxers who were mobilized by a conspiratorial influencer with over a million followers. This dynamic can make fringe or activist groups look normative online because people who do not agree tend to disengage from the debate.

While online influencers can be as consequential as the propagandists of Bernays’ time, they operate differently. While traditional propagandists directly influence the public, invisible rulers exist in a more complex trinity with algorithms and crowds. The intense activity of these extreme voices games the algorithm in their favor, which amplifies their messages and incentivizes others to join their narrative. Algorithms shape the flow of information by feeding people content and recommending groups designed to keep people on the platform. In turn, crowds provide feedback to influencers in the form of likes and shares, creating a parasocial relationship between influencers and followers, building the stature of influencers, and giving them feedback about which views to continue sharing. Together, this trinity creates bespoke realities that shape how groups see the world.

These bespoke realities pose a serious challenge to our social, political and economic institutions, which were built in a world that looked more like Bernays’ than DiResta’s. On January 6^th, 2021, for instance, the U.S. faced an insurrection designed to overturn the results of a presidential election. This event was fueled by a conspiracy theory that was spread and coordinated on social media. How, then, should institutions respond to the rapid growth of the online world and the rise of these invisible rulers? DiResta reviews a number of possible solutions targeting our digital environments—solutions such as increasing transparency, redesigning algorithms, and adding friction. We have found that algorithmic transparency and providing more options to take control of one’s content-recommendation algorithm are particularly popular solutions across the political spectrum.

A growing challenge, however, is that the U.S. Government and social media platforms have become increasingly uncooperative with such efforts. For instance, Meta removed fact checkers from its platforms and Elon Musk dismantled the content moderation policies on Twitter/X while incentivizing influencers to spread incendiary content. The solution will therefore require other approaches. At the individual level, for instance, people can take control of their feeds by unfollowing accounts posting extreme, undesirable content. Institutionally, our legal system can step in to check the power of Big Tech companies, as in recent lawsuits ruling that Meta’s “addictive design” harms young users.

Another important development since DiResta’s book is the proliferation of AI models. It is unclear how invisible rulers will operate in a post-AI world. Will influencers have less impact in a post-AI world, as people can instantly fact check their claims or as AI influencers take the place of human influencers? Or will AI make influencers become more powerful, using AI to generate ever more realistic and dynamic misinformation or propaganda campaigns? Will AI lead us to generate even more customized and extreme bespoke realities? Or will AI potentially nudge people toward more accurate—and less extreme—beliefs? The future in this area is difficult to predict: but one recommendation from Invisible Rulers that stands is that institutions need to adapt to this new world, and cannot be passive in the face of these new changes. As she notes, “there will be no return to a handful of media translating respectable institutional thinking for the masses.”

While it might feel convenient to dismiss or ignore the online dynamics of invisible rulers, this new information ecosystem is now fully integrated with traditional media outlets who pull stories from social media and journalists who actively engage in online discourse. Even the giants of traditional media–like the New York Times–are subject to the online incentive dynamics to ensure traffic, ad revenue, and public relevance. This means the power of the new class of invisible rulers has huge implications for nearly every sphere of society. Individuals, organizations, and institutions need to understand and adapt to this new reality. We are all in the grasp of this new tyrannical minority and the algorithms and crowds who amplify their messages.

This article was written by Jay, Steve Rathje, and Raunak Pillai. You can download the full preprint here: Van Bavel, J. J., Rathje, S., & Pillai, R. M. (2026). Tyranny of the minority: How social media influencers, algorithms, and crowds shape public opinion. Under review.

News and Updates

Jay will be having a live conversation on substack with Jacqueline Nesi on June 4th at 4pm EST on the big question: “Is a digital detox really worth it? What tech is doing to our relationships and mental health.” All newsletter subscribers are invited to attend live and join a Q&A session.

Jacki is a clinical psychologist and professor at Brown University who writes the popular newsletter TechnoSapiens. She studies how technology and social media impact mental health (especially for teens), and how parents can help their kids navigate it. Here is is an example of one of her recent posts:

Techno Sapiens

Are school phone bans working?

5 min read…

Read more

3 months ago · 35 likes · 10 comments · Jacqueline Nesi, PhD

Talk to Us

Use our Mailbox to send us your questions

We also now have a mailbox where you can send us your questions and we will share the answers in a newsletter once a month

Talk to the “Power of Us Chatbot”

We created a “Power of Us Chatbot” for subscribers. It is trained on our book and newsletter to answer any questions you have about our content and applying it to your own questions. The chatbot was created by Androw Ramy and Rémi Thériault in the Center for Conflict & Cooperation. It’s also an ethnical chatbot (as you can see below, it blocked Dominic from attempting to blackmail Jay). Let us know if you like it or have any suggestions. You’ll need to use the password: _subscriber

Join us for “Ask Me Anything” sessions for summer! Premium subscribers can join us for our monthly live Q&A with Jay or Dom where you can ask us anything from workshopping research questions, career advice to opinions and recommendations on pop culture happenings. Upgrade your subscription using the button below.

Invites to RSVP have been sent via email from powerofusbook@gmail.com

• June 4 @ 4:00pm EST with Dom

• July 6th @ 1:00pm EST with Jay

• August TBA @ EST with Dom

• September 10th @ 3:00pm EST with Jay

Catch up on the last one…

Last week we interviewed George Newman about how great ideas happen—and why creativity is a team sport…

In How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success, cognitive scientist and University of Toronto Business School Professor, George Newman, draws on cutting-edge research to reveal that creativity isn’t magic, it’s method. He argues that the most successful innovators don’t wait to be struck by brilliance; their creative process is more like archeology. As keen-eyed explorers, they scan the terrain, dig with intention, and, with a little luck, find gold.

One of the key ideas from his book is that creativity is a collective endeavor. True genius is not located in the individual, but the people they surround themselves with. He explains how legendary inventor Thomas Edison’s greatest invention wasn’t the lightbulb, battery, or stock ticket, but the idea factory: Menlo Park. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention

By revealing the hidden steps behind breakthrough success, How Great Ideas Happen uncovers a repeatable method that anyone can follow, reframing creativity not as a rare gift, but as a universal capacity waiting to be unlocked through exploration. The creative process is an adventure of ideas—this book is your guide. You can buy a copy of HOW GREAT IDEAS HAPPEN here. We are also giving away a few free copies—see the details at the end of the interview to enter the draw.

What does your book teach us about social identity or group dynamics?

When it comes to creativity and innovation, our environments and the people around us matter a lot more than our innate abilities. One of my favorite examples of this is Thomas Edison. Many people think of him as a lone genius who was just conjuring up these fantastic ideas out of thin air—the phonograph, motion pictures, the ever-cliché lightbulb. But the reality is that Edison didn’t work alone. Not even close.

In fact, perhaps Edison’s greatest invention was the idea factory: Menlo Park. Edison employed nearly 200 engineers and scientists who worked round the clock just generating ideas, many of them bad. They filled countless notebooks, often built upon (and even stole) the work of others, and benefitted from constant refinement and iteration—their process was much more about trial and error and discovery then pure “out of thin air” invention. And Edison wasn’t shy about this fact. He once said, “There’s no such thing as a brain-born idea. Everything comes from the outside.” What you see is that across history and many different types of creative work—technology, science, business, the art—great ideas depend on this kind of exploration, collaboration, feedback. Great ideas often come from looking outward to others (not inward).

What is the most important idea readers will learn from your book?

Rather than lightbulb moments, creativity is often a much more methodical process of discovery and narrowing in, which means that it is ultimately something that is accessible to everyone—more like archeology than a sudden flash of brilliance. In my book I talk about this in terms of a series of steps: Surveying (where have other successful ideas been found), Gridding (making your search organized), Digging (get everything out of the ground), and Sifting (going back to see what you’ve found).

What is one factoid, statistic or study in your book that everyone should know?

I really like this paper by Brain Uzzi and his colleagues which looked at breakthrough scientific theories. Essentially, what they found is that the most impactful science is (as they put it) “exceptionally conventional.” In other words, groundbreaking theories do not arise when the work is totally new. Rather, it comes from research that is grounded in ideas that are roughly 90-95% conventional and only 5-10% novel. In my book, I talk about this “5% novelty rule” and how you see a similar strategy among many successful creatives—everyone from fashion designers, to visual artists, to songwriters like Bob Dylan, to entire genres like Korean cinema, which has completely captivated the world.

What will readers find provocative or controversial about your book?

Even if we don’t explicitly endorse the genius myth—the notion that creativity comes from special people with rare talents—it creeps in subtle ways. People default to the same tired metaphors and slogans: unlocking your inner genius, look deep within, lightbulb moments. It’s a way of thinking that is deeply ingrained in culture. And importantly, it shapes our beliefs about who gets to count as a genius. For example, research shows that the exact same creative work—in business and the arts—receives significantly more credit and praise when it’s attributed to a man. And among the top 40 best-selling visual artists whose work accounts for more than half of all art sales, not a single one is a woman. Pick up almost any book on creativity and, if there’s a portrait on the cover, it’s likely a guy who lived a hundred years ago.

I’ve also become interested in the narratives in tech. For instance, at the incubator stage, tech start-ups are all about collaboration and hackathons. But then, once the idea breaks, suddenly it is the lone dude in a leather jacket whose rogue vision paved the way.

Do you have any practical advice for people who want to apply these ideas (e.g., three tips for the real world)?

Tons! Here are 3 (and the book has dozens of exercises and research-backed tips):

1. Good ideas are worth waiting for. Research shows that ideas, in their “back of a napkin” form, are equally as predictive of long-term success as the final draft. It’s the kernel/nugget of an idea that has the real power.

2. The “5% novelty rule.” The most successful idea are mostly conventional. About 95 % of an idea can be traced to things that already exist, and it’s the critical 5% tweak—someone’s own unique spin or interpretation or advantage—that makes the critical difference.

3. Push past the creative cliff. We drastically underestimate the value of continuing to brainstorm after we feel depleted. Research shows that the strongest ideas tend to emerge after people think they’re running out of steam. Your best idea probably isn’t the 9th one—it’s closer to the 97th.

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Check our our plans for the newsletter after crossing a huge milestone! Thanks again for reading and subscribing, there’s more in store for the future.

In many places, a town becomes a city once it reaches 10,000 residents. In Washington, it’s considered the moment a place becomes a “first-class city”!

Crossing this threshold feels meaningful to us because this newsletter is no longer just a side project — it’s become a real community. And now that we’ve reached the size of a city, we have decided to add a number of exciting new amenities.

When we started this newsletter, the goal was not just to build an audience or share the lessons from our book. It was to build a place where we could think more clearly about some of the hardest questions in modern society:

• Why are people so divided?

• Why do groups cooperate well in some moments and fall apart in others?

• How do identity, norms, and institutions shape the way we see the world?

• What would it take to build a stronger sense of “us”?

Over time, this newsletter has become a community of people who care about those questions — people who want more than slogans, outrage, or easy answers. This feels rare in our current political and technological environment.

We are living through a period of social strain and disconnection, political division, rising incivility, institutional distrust, economic inequality, and technological upheaval. We believe these are not separate problems. They are deeply linked.

There is no shortage of pithy answers and hot takes online. What there is a shortage of is careful, evidence-based thinking about why people believe what they do, why conflict escalates, and how we can create healthier forms of collaboration and disagreement.

That is what we are trying to do here. Sometimes that means writing about polarization and misinformation. Other times it means writing about teamwork, collaboration, belonging, and leadership. Sometimes it means thinking through how new technologies like social media and AI are changing the way we think, connect, and make decisions.

If someone shared this post with you and you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a good moment to join.

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Why this milestone matters

Ten thousand subscribers is not just a vanity metric. (Although we did take a few moments to celebrate when we finally crossed the threshold!) It means there is a serious audience for thoughtful writing about these issues. It means people are hungry for work that is grounded in science but written for the real world. And it means this conversation is growing. It also means our newsletter needs to evolve.

This summer, we’ll be sharing more writing and conversations on the psychology of collaboration, why incivility is rising, how identity shapes conflict, the social effects of AI, and what it takes to create healthier groups, norms, and institutions.

We also have several major media projects, public conversations, and educational resources in the pipeline, and we are looking forward to bringing the best of those ideas back here. For instance, we spent last week talking with Oprah about these issues and will give you a heads up when that conversation will come out online.

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We are also going to add more engaging content, including:

• An “Ask us Anything” mailbox where you can send us your questions (we will select a few and share the answers each month on our newsletter)

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We are grateful to everyone who has taken the time and effort to join us in thinking deeply about these issues. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed, read, shared, replied, disagreed, forwarded an essay to a friend, or brought these ideas into your classrooms, workplaces, and conversations.

And to everyone already reading: thank you. We are very glad you’re here.

With gratitude from Jay, Dominic, & Yvonne.

Ask me Anything

We have one final monthly virtual meeting (Ask Me Anythings) for paid subscribers this spring! This is a chance for you to meet one-on-one or in small groups with Jay and Dom to talk about anything you want (e.g., our book, the topics we cover in this newsletter, our latest research, a problem you’re struggling with, or whatever else you would like). Our summer series will be announced soon.

• May 9th, 2pm EST with Jay

Paid subscribers received an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com with details on how to sign up. Reply to this email with any questions you have about this, or feedback on paid subscriber offerings.

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Our last newsletter was censored by email servers because of the language we chose :) ICYMI, check it out below.

Elop’s message was widely mocked as “the worst email ever”, illustrating how corporate bullshit can go wrong when leaders try to use it as a cushion and to distract.

Corporate-speak is, of course, not limited to restructuring memos. Read just about any company’s mission statement or “brand story manifesto” and it’s likely you’ll see a familiar dialect of corporate speak. “30,000 foot view” “moving the needle” “driving alignment”, or one of our favorites, “activating cross-functional collaboration”.

This type of speech is purposefully fancy. It is deployed by executives in collaboration with communications specialists, presumably in the hope of inspiring employees and “energizing stakeholders”.

But far from inspiring and energizing, corporate bullshit, as cognitive psychologist and author of the newsletter Shane Litrell calls it, very often does the opposite. Specifically, it erodes trust, confuses audiences and hinders decision-making.

Bullshit and corporate bullshit

Harry Frankfurt, an American philosopher, famously wrote an irreverent paper entitled “On Bullshit” in which he defined bullshit and distinguished it from lying. He argued that whereas liars intentionally manipulate the truth, bullshitters are indifferent to the truth altogether. In his view, bullshit is:

“A form of dishonesty akin to lying but even less considerate of reality. Whereas the liar is at least mindful of the truth (if only to avoid it), the “bullshitter,” is distinguished by his complete indifference to how things are.”

Whether its purveyor is an advertiser, corporate leader or a politician, he argued, this form of dishonesty is rooted in a desire to make an impression on the listener, with no real interest in the underlying facts. “By virtue of this, bullshit is the greater enemy of truth than lies are,” said Frankfurt.

In organizations and teams, bullshit can threaten performance and organizational effectiveness by way of eroding trust, communication and decision-making. But many people, including business leaders still try to use corporate bullshit to their advantage. Shane Littrell describes corporate bullshit as a “functionally misleading” style of communication — language designed to sound impressive while saying very little at all.

The corporate bullshit scale

In a new series of studies involving 1,000+ office workers, Littrell developed a Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale — you can try it yourself below — to measure how persuasive people find this style of rhetoric. Participants were asked to evaluate statements generated by a “corporate bullshit generator” e.g., “We will actualize a renewed level of adaptive coherence.” Added to the mix were real quotes from Fortune 500 executives.

Results revealed that employees who rated these sorts of statements as more “business savvy” also scored lower on tests of analytic thinking, cognitive reflection, and effective decision-making.

That said, those who scored higher on corporate bullshit receptivity also tended to feel more inspired by their company’s mission statement and slightly more satisfied with their jobs. They were more likely to view their leaders as visionary and more likely to repeat the same kind of language themselves (see the figure below).

In an intriguing duality, it appears that appreciating corporate-bullshit is associated with more positive perceptions of one’s corporate job, but worse performance!

What corporate bullshit does to organizations and teams

Why is corporate bullshit harmful? Unlike technical jargon, which can clarify and increase precision, corporate bullshit does the opposite. It creates the illusion of meaning without committing to anything concrete and may contribute to a series of unfortunate consequences.

1. Erosion of Trust: Bullshit poisons the foundation of trust within groups and organizations. When members engage in deceptive communication, they undermine the trust necessary for effective collaboration. Bullshit erodes credibility, fosters skepticism, and fractures relationships. Without trust, teamwork crumbles and productivity suffers. Bullshit can also destroy an organization’s reputation with partners and customers.

2. Communication Breakdown: Effective communication is the lifeblood of any group or organization. When bullshit thrives, honest and meaningful dialogue becomes impossible. Bullshitters obscure the truth, diluting the clarity of messages and hindering the exchange of ideas. Misunderstandings and conflicts arise, impeding progress and hindering collective problem-solving.

3. Impaired Decision-making: In the presence of bullshit, decision-making gets harder. When information is distorted, the decision-making process is misguided. This impairment can lead groups and organizations down paths that diverge from their intended goals resulting in wasted time, resources, and opportunities.

To counteract bullshit in the workplace, we need to value the truth and strive for honest, concrete, and meaningful communication. Recognizing and calling out bullshit can help preserve the integrity of discourse and promote genuine understanding. Research in group psychology offers concrete suggestions to make yourself and others less susceptible to bullshit:

1. A Culture of Intellectual Honesty: The first step towards minimizing bullshit within your groups or organizations is to cultivate a culture of intellectual honesty. Encourage open and transparent communication, where members feel safe to express their opinions and ideas without fear of judgment or reprisal (known as psychological safety). Managers and highly-visible organizational leaders should foster an environment where members are encouraged and rewarded to speak up against bullshit and uphold the importance of accurate information.

2. Norms of Critical Thinking and Fact-Checking: Combatting bullshit requires equipping members with the tools of critical thinking and fact-checking. Encourage healthy (but not conspiratorial) norms around skepticism towards information and claims presented within the group or organization. Encourage members to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, and seek diverse perspectives in an open and transparent way (using facts to support assertions). Provide resources and training on how to identify cognitive and logical fallacies, spot misleading information, and verify facts. By promoting a collective commitment to truth, you create a stronghold against the corrosive effects of bullshit.

3. No BS Leadership: Leaders play a pivotal role in setting the tone and standards within a group or organization. Even if you are not technically a supervisor or manager, lead by example in your own communication and actions with your colleagues. Encourage open dialogue, active listening, and the pursuit of truth. When leaders model and uphold a commitment to intellectual integrity, it sets the stage for others to follow suit.

4. Inclusive Language: In addition to replacing corporate bullshit with precise and honest truth, consider increasing the use of inclusive language. In one study, researchers analyzed a century of speeches given by politicians aiming to become the Australian prime minister. They found that the victors in these elections were more likely than the losers to use collective pronouns like “we” and “us” rather than individual pronouns like “I” and “me”. In a more recent study of annual reports written by CEOs of large German companies, researchers found that every extra collective pronoun was associated with a staggering additional 820,000 Euros in their organization’s net profits.

   

Rate yourself on corporate bullshit

You will read several statements from successful business leaders and other relevant sources.

Please rate how much “business savvy” is expressed by each statement on a scale from 1 = “No business savvy at all” to 5 =“A great deal of business savvy.”

1. Working at the intersection of cross-collateralization and blue-sky thinking, we will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing and end-state vision in a world defined by architecting to potentiate on a vertical landscape.

2. Our goal is to engage our capabilities by focusing our efforts on executing the current transmission of our empowerment, driving an innovative liquidity with our change drivers, and coaching energetic frameworks to our shovel-ready alignment.

3. This synergistic look at our thought leadership will ensure that we are de-contenting and avoiding reputational deficits with our key takeaways as effectively as we can in order to sunset our resonating focus.

4. This scalable look at our company will ensure that we are executing and minimizing cross-back impact with our conversations as effectively as we can in order to fundamentally disrupt our ecosystem.

5. We will fundamentally disrupt our conversations in delivering upstream transformational performance-focused key learnings like no other company anywhere in the world.

6. By solving the pain point of customers with our conversations, we will ideate a renewed level of end-state vision and growth-mindset in the market between us and others who are architecting to download on a similar balanced scorecard.

7. Our bandwidth comes from the visionary culture-shifting of several new growth-hacked, integrated networks that capitalize on our heritage to engage our future when building bridges to success.

8. We will cover all the bases of our low hanging fruit by joining with our bleeding-edge, results-driven global partners to better grasp our back-end architecture.

9. By getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence and culture fit in the market between us and others who are solutioning to download on a similar, value-centered strategic intent.

10. As an emerging leader grounded in a mission to benchmark and nurture the human spirit, we have always aspired to make upstream connections, drilling down one more click on people and communities around the world.

11. This rigorous look at our business will ensure that we are managing and optimizing our resources as effectively as we can in order to improve the brand experience.

12. We will leverage our extensive business networks, market knowledge, and logistical expertise to produce high-value, bundled products for an increasing number of global customers.

13. By focusing again on the customer experience, we will create a renewed level of meaningful differentiation and separation in the market between us and our competitors.

14. In order to reinvigorate our company, we must continually analyze and review every part of our company operations.

15. Our performance and capabilities cannot be compared to our peers. We have a proven business concept that is eminently scalable in our existing businesses and adaptable enough to extend to new markets.

16. Our success comes from the rigorous execution of several new strategic initiatives that capitalize on our heritage to drive our successful future.

17. We plan to right-size our manufacturing operations to align to the new strategy and take advantage of integration opportunities.

18. We have robust networks of strategic assets that we own or have contractual access to, which give us greater flexibility and speed to reliably deliver widespread logistical solutions.

19. In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart. Their foundations are stronger because they are built with the strength of the human spirit, not an ad campaign. The companies that are lasting are those that are authentic.

20. Because of our iconic brands, our unending commitment to premium content, and the innovation of our teams, we have permission from the market to be a world-class, tier-one partner.

Could you guess which ten statements are generated and which were actual corporate speak quotes? Read the open-source pre-print here to find out.

We also created a “A Practical Guide for Leaders & Employees for dealing with Corporate Bullshit” PDF that premium subscribers can download below:

Read more

A couple of years later, Earth Day was created to demonstrate support for the environment. Every April 22nd, over 1 billion people around the globe get together to help with environmental cleanups, tree planting, and advocacy for sustainable policies. To honor earth day, we decided to share our most ambitious research on climate change—it offers some insight into the types of messages the inspire or depress support for climate action.

There is heated debate about how to communicate about climate change. Many experts are yelling that the world is burning. UN Secretary-General António Guterres coined the term “Global boiling” in 2023 to describe the current era of extreme, record-breaking climate change. And a growing body of individuals known as ‘doomers’ now regularly share extremely pessimistic, nihilist or fatalistic views about global problems on social media.

But might this extreme paralyze us into inaction, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? If we are all doomed, maybe it doesn’t matter if I buy a Hummer and skip public transit. I’ll just post catastrophic memes for clicks on social media as the world burns around me. At least I’ll get some klout before it all goes up in flames.

In fact, this is pretty much what we found in a massive study that we published in Science Advances two years ago. To help figure out the precise impact of climate doomerism and compare it with alternative messages, we recently completed one of the largest experiments ever conducted on climate change behavior, with 59,440 participants in 63 countries.

Together with an international team of 255 other behavioral scientists and climate change experts (led by Madalina Vlasceanu & Kim Doell), we tested the effects of the 11 common messages meant to boost climate change beliefs, policy support, and concrete action. These messages were selected by a team of experts, and we consulted with the scientists who had originally created and tested each message to ensure we got it right (you can see a summary of each intervention below).

The messages/interventions ranged from emphasizing scientific consensus (e.g., noting that “99 percent of expert climate scientists” agree on the climate change facts), or the widespread concern of others (e.g., a majority of people in each nation is concerned), to emphasizing the consequences for one’s region (e.g., increased frequency and severity of wildfires and floods) or the effects of climate change on future generations (e.g., asking participants to imagine writing a letter about their actions regarding climate change that would be read by people decades from now).

Imagine how you would feel if you read this message (from the negative emotions intervention), which involved exposure to scientific claims about the impacts of climate change in a doom and gloom messaging style typically used by climate communicators to induce negative emotions:

“Climate change is happening much more quickly and will have a much greater impact than climate scientists previously thought, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022). If your anxiety about climate change is dominated by fears of starving polar bears, glaciers melting, and sea levels rising, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a young adult today. And yet the swelling seas—and the cities they will drown—have so dominated the picture of climate change/global warming that they have blinded us to other threats, many much closer at hand and much more catastrophic…”

Does this inspire you to take action or leave you feeling overwhelmed?

We compared this doom and gloom message to the other climate change messages on a highly diverse sample of participants. Since climate change is a truly global issue, we translated and tested these messages in 63 different countries. This allowed us to see which messages worked best around the globe—as well as within specific countries and cultures.

Our findings revealed that doom and gloom messaging was highly effective for stimulating climate change information sharing, like posting on the internet or social media, where negativity reigns. As you can see in our figure below, doomerism (ie negative emotions) was the single most effective strategy for increasing social media sharing.

However, doom and gloom messaging was the absolute worst for motivating action and among the worst for changing climate change beliefs or support for climate change policies. In fact, negative emotions backfired on effortful behavior—making people significantly less likely to take action for the environment compared to a neutral control condition (shown as the dotted line on the figure below).

It turns out that critics are right to worry that doom and gloom can demoralize the public into inaction. We found that this strategy had no effect on policy support or climate beliefs. For these outcomes, writing a letter to future generations explaining one’s climate actions today or thinking about the consequences of climate change in one’s region were the most effective interventions.

And doom and gloom even backfired when it came to more effortful behavior. When faced with the enormous stakes of the climate crisis, personal actions—and perhaps even policy change—can seem futile. People withdraw or disengage. As Madalina and Jay recently concluded in an article for Scientific American:

“Doom and gloom messaging can do both things: induce helplessness, discourage individual-level action; but also motivate people to spread the word.”

Many other messages also failed or even backfired, underscoring how difficult it is to actually mobilize real, effortful action on climate change. This is why far more research is needed on the topic and why we all need to embrace greater intellectual humility around this issue.

It’s common to see certain messages—and messaging strategies—go viral on social media. But that doesn’t mean they will work in the real world. In fact, they might even backfire. The norms and incentive structures of social media are very different from the real world. The messages that go viral online may be completely counterproductive offline. The incentive structures that drive engagement online might ultimately depress real world climate action.

If we are past the point of no return, why bother taking action or making sacrifices?

We also found that different people responded differently to the various climate messages and that this varies across countries. To design the most effective messages, scientists and policy makers will need to tailor them to the right audience.

To see the effects of our interventions along dimensions such as country of residence, income level, age, ideological leaning, socioeconomic status, gender and also type of climate action targeted, visit our open-access user-friendly web app. Feel free to play around and find out what worked best (or worst) in your home country.

Sadly, we did not find a silver bullet for spurring climate action. But our research found several messages that moved the needle on climate change beliefs and actions. We suspect that similar lessons apply to other issues, from strengthening democracy to public health. In fact, we were recently part of a similar project designed to reduce affective polarization and found that several messages either didn’t work or backfired (thankfully, the optimistic message we created—based on The Power of Us—was the 3rd most effective, from over 252 submissions).

It also suggests that there are very serious downsides to doomerism. It might be fun to get engagement on social media, but the reward system there does not apply very well to the things that drive real policy change or behavior. We should be very wary about leaning on doomerism when the same set of facts can be conveyed in a more powerful message.

This has been well known for some time in the persuasion literature. Messages that appeal to our fears (known as fear appeals) are only really effective when they increase a sense of efficacy and focus on one-time behaviors. Alas, the doom and gloom messages on climate change often undercut a sense of efficacy and require repeated, long term habit change.

Does this mean we should avoid sharing the scientific facts about climate change? No, not at all. In fact, the message about scientific consensus was more effective than negative emotions on every single measure in our study—except sharing on social media. In short, people are highly responsive to scientific messages when they are framed in the right way.

We asked Jamie Hyneman, one of the most prominent science communicators in the media and former co-host of MythBusters for his thoughts on effective climate change messaging. He suggested messaging that provides 1) clarity of action and 2) appeals to morality and ethics.

“Looking at the ethics might be the way to go, more specifically, what is the right or wrong thing to do and what does that look like? The morality aspect of climate change is one thing that stands on its own and transcends identities - like whether you’re conservative or liberal.”

His intuitions were on point: our study confirmed that messages with moral foundations yielded the most motivation for positive climate action. And we have found that framing messages through a moral or ethical lens can make people feel more strongly about almost any action—from riding a bike to studying for a test. This might be a lesson that people should take to heart.

Let us know if you are doing anything for Earth Day in the comments.

News and Updates

Why do two people look at the same evidence and reach completely opposite conclusions? Jay discussed selective attention, sycophantic AI, political tribalism, and how it impacts leadership on the Culture Changers Podcast with Allison Hare:

Ask me Anything

We have one final monthly virtual meeting (Ask Me Anythings) for paid subscribers this spring! This is a chance for you to meet one-on-one or in small groups with Jay and Dom to talk about anything you want (e.g., our book, the topics we cover in this newsletter, our latest research, a problem you’re struggling with, or whatever else you would like). Our summer series will be announced soon.

• May 9th, 2pm EST with Jay

Paid subscribers received an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com with details on how to sign up. Reply to this email with any questions you have about this, or feedback on paid subscriber offerings.

Learn more about THE POWER OF US

If you like our newsletter, we encourage you to check out our award-winning book “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony”. You can learn more about the book or order it from the links on our website (here or scan the QR code below). We keep the newsletter free, but are extremely grateful if you have a chance to purchase the book or buy it for a friend who wants to learn more about group psychology.

Catch up on the last one…

One more week to join our book giveaway for a free copy of Sonja Lyubomirsky’s newest book, How to Feel Loved.

The Power of Us

How to feel more loved

Love isn’t just something we give or receive, it’s something we communicate. In HOW TO FEEL LOVED: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most, happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky and relationship scientist Harry Reis argue that many of us are already loved, yet still feel unseen and disconnected. The gap isn’t about effort or compatibility, but about how we show up in our relationships…

Read more

4 months ago · 21 likes · 2 comments · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

Drawing on decades of research in psychology and human connection, the authors introduce five practical mindsets designed to transform how we relate to others, which involves embracing vulnerability to expressing genuine curiosity. At the heart of their framework is a simple idea: feeling loved requires being truly known, and allowing others the space to be known in return.

We interviewed Sonja about her new book and she explained why these ideas should reshape the way we think about identity and connection — and why something as small as asking one more thoughtful question might be the key to a more meaningful relationship. You can buy their book HOW TO FEEL LOVED here. We are also giving away a few free copies—see the details at the end of the interview to enter the draw.

What does your book teach us about social identity or group dynamics?

The book teaches us that we can build connections with other people even when we don’t share a common identity with them, and even across political, religious, and cultural divides. In How To Feel Loved, I describe the kinds of questions that are likely to foster meaningful conversations rather than ho-hum responses. For example, rather than staying on the surface, ask questions that dig deeper into what makes the other person a unique, thoughtful human. When you do this, it is more likely that your conversation partner will feel seen and appreciated, and you will have learned something important about them. That's the kind of conversation that builds connections.

What is the most important idea readers will learn from your book?

Many of us ARE loved, but we don’t always FEEL loved. If you want to feel more loved in a particular relationship in your life, you don’t need to broadcast your successes or try to make yourself more lovable. By contrast, feeling loved requires being truly KNOWN to the other person and truly knowing THEM. This means talking to others in a way that takes down the walls between us.

We encourage readers to embrace five mindsets to make this happen:

1. Sharing Mindset (open up, be real, be vulnerable),

2. Listening-to-Learn Mindset (listen like there’s going to be a quiz tomorrow, as opposed to waiting for your turn to respond),

3. Radical Curiosity Mindset (show enthusiastic, authentic interest in the other’s inner world; ask them deep questions),

4. Open-Heart mindset (show warmth, kindness, and a belief in their dreams), and

5. Multiplicity Mindset (be accepting of their flaws, don’t define a person by one trait or one behavior).

What is one factoid, statistic or study in your book that everyone should know?

70% of people don’t feel loved as much or as often as they’d like, and 40% don’t feel loved as much or as often as they’d like by their romantic partners.

In 2024, we gave a survey to a large and representative sample of Americans, asking how much they felt loved in various relationships, and whether they wanted to feel more loved. 70% of people don’t feel loved as much or as often as they’d like, and 40% don’t feel loved as much or as often as they’d like by their romantic partners. The takeaway message from this survey: there’s much room for improvement. A large majority of us want to feel more love in our lives. The 5 mindsets we describe in our book will help people achieve that goal.

What will readers find provocative or controversial about your book?

Not feeling loved isn’t about personal deficiencies or a partner’s behavior--two convenient explanations most of us fall into. When we don’t feel loved, we believe that we should make ourselves more lovable (e.g., by broadcasting our positive qualities and hiding our weaknesses). We argue this is a myth.

Do you have any practical advice for people who want to apply these ideas (e.g., three tips for the real world)?

1. Share something real about yourself, be vulnerable, but start small. Pacing is really important. Start with a small or medium thing to open up about--e.g., instead of saying, “I’m fine,” explain how your day is really going (e.g., “I had a rough morning”)

2. Listen to the other person in order to learn, not to respond. Quiet your voice and your inner chatter, so theirs can be heard. Stay with them instead of mentally rehearsing your next story.

3. Ask the other person one more question than you’d normally ask. Like, “How did that really feel?” or “What was the hardest thing about it?”

The three words that everyone loves to hear? They’re not “I love you.” They’re not “you’ve lost weight” and not “you were right.”

Those three words are “tell me more.” Such questions, when they’re authentic, signal that you’re right there with them. They’re a gift.

🎁 Book Giveaway Details 📖

To enter Sonja’s book giveaway, either…

1. Be a paid subscriber to the newsletter. Paid subscribers are automatically entered into all our monthly book giveaways!

   You can subscribe or upgrade your subscription below.

2. If you are not a paid subscriber yet, make sure you have a free subscription and simply leave a comment answering the question below:

   Which mindset can you embrace to improve your close relationship with someone in your life? (Sharing Mindset, Listening-to-Learn Mindset, Radical Curiosity Mindset, Open-Heart Mindset, Multipicity Mindset)

3. This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Enter before April 28th, 12 pm PST. Three winners will be selected at random and will receive an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com on April 29th, 2026.

Notes of the week

We are now sharing several new studies each week as they come out on our Power of Us substack app account. Please follow us on the app if you want to see the latest research on topics related to our newsletter. Here are some sample studies we shared this week:

Ask me Anything

We have one final monthly virtual meeting (Ask Me Anythings) for paid subscribers this spring! This is a chance for you to meet one-on-one or in small groups with Jay and Dom to talk about anything you want (e.g., our book, the topics we cover in this newsletter, our latest research, a problem you’re struggling with, or whatever else you would like). Our summer series will be announced soon.

• May 6th, 2pm EST with Jay

Paid subscribers recieved an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com with details on how to sign up. Reply to this email with any questions you have about this, or feedback on paid subscriber offerings.

Catch up on the last one…

Our last newsletter explained why social media is harming society, drawing on recent court cases, national polls, whistleblower testimony, internal documents, and our own research on the topic—they are all beginning to converge on a clear picture about these technologies.

Last week, juries in two different states delivered multimillion-dollar verdicts against Big Tech. A New Mexico jury handed down a $375 million verdict in a case brought by the state’s attorney general against Meta for enabling child sexual exploitation. The next day, a California jury awarded a young woman a combined $6 million in damages from Meta and YouTube for the allegedly addictive and mentally distressing properties of social media apps, including algorithmic curation and so-called infinite scroll, where the app continually provides you with new content as you scroll down the page.

These verdicts have catalyzed a "tidal cultural shift" toward viewing social media companies not just as content platforms, but as manufacturers of products that require regulation, similar to classic legal cases against "Big Tobacco". In fact, this parallel is exactly how some Meta-employees felt about their attempts to target kids:

The focus of the public has shifted from the content posted on platforms and content moderation policies to the deliberate design decisions made by these platforms—such as infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, and push notifications—that are engineered to maximize engagement, even at the cost of individual or collective well-being.

This is hardly news to us. We have been studying and writing about the challenges posed by social media for the past decade. In this newsletter, we have written about the Facebook papers shared by a prominent whistleblower and why schools should ban smartphones.

This should also come as no surprise to anyone who has been following these issues. A majority of people believe that social media is harming children—and this has now been the case for several years. It is also a rare case of bipartisan consensus, with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all on the same page.

In many cases, the research and safety teams are deeply aware of these problems. But the senior management in the companies is often unwilling to implement changes. The pursuit of profit is a difficult temptation and they have focused on harvesting the attention of teenagers, rather than ensuring their safety. For instance, Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a 2017 internal memo: “Teen time spent [should] be our top goal of 2017”, even after safety concerns were raised by employees.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen was one of the first employees to bring these concerns to the attention of the public. Her testimony and public interviews provided a better understanding about how Facebook engineers their platform and the consequences this has for spreading misinformation and fostering social conflict.

“Facebook is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. Its own research is showing the content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing—it is easier to inspire people to anger than other emotions.” — Frances Haugen, on 60 Minutes.

A few days after the whistleblower went public, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, spoke with employees about the revelations. According to the New York Times, he claimed that Haugen’s assertions about how Facebook polarizes people were “pretty easy to debunk.”

Two court cases—and numerous studies later—the data is firmly on her side.

Debate about the potential harms caused by Facebook and other social media platforms is still up in the air on some issues, but findings on the spread of divisive and polarizing content (in the United States at least) seem clear. Before the recent interview with Haugen on 60 Minutes or her appearance before Congress, Jay published an analysis of nearly 3 million posts on Facebook and Twitter with his colleagues from Cambridge University, Steve Rathje and Sander van der Linden.

In our research, the single biggest predictor of social media “virality” was dunking on a political foe. Each word referring to the political out-group increased the odds of a social media post being shared by 67% (see figure below). If a post came from a Democrat, a word like “Republican” or “conservative” led to increased virality. And if a post came from a Republican, a word like “Joe Biden” led to the same. And most of these posts were clearly negative.

One example of a viral post that spread in Republican circles was from Breitbart, promoting a video entitled, “Every American needs to see Joe Biden’s latest brain freeze.” Meanwhile, a post that went viral from Democrats came from The Daily Beast, claiming that Mike Pence was blatantly lying about Covid-19.

When Steve, Sander, and Jay published a report about these data in The Washington Post, Facebook published a fierce rebuttal. They argued that “Extremism is bad for our business” and presented a limited set of studies that focused largely on the impact of Facebook in other countries.

Yet their own internal research, shared by this whistle-blower, contradicts their rebuttal. According to a disturbing new analysis of the Facebook Papers by The Atlantic, employees at Facebook have long known that the social media giant amplifies extremism, spears misinformation, and encourages political polarization. And they are growing increasingly angry with the way that company leadership has refused to incorporate these insights.

“Again and again, the Facebook Papers show staffers sounding alarms about the dangers posed by the platform—how Facebook amplifies extremism and misinformation, how it incites violence, how it encourages radicalization and political polarization. Again and again, staffers reckon with the ways in which Facebook’s decisions stoke these harms, and they plead with leadership to do more.

And again and again, staffers say, Facebook’s leaders ignore them.”

It also turns out that people don’t like this type of content. We asked a diverse sample of Americans how they feel about the content that spreads on social media. As you can see below, people believe that divisive content, moral outrage, negative content, high-arousal content, and misinformation are all likely to go viral online. However, they wish this type of content would not go viral on social media. Instead, they want to see far more positive content spreading online, such as accurate, nuanced, uplifting, and educational content.

The aversion to social media extends well beyond specific topics. About half of Gen Z wishes TikTok (47%) and X (50%) didn’t exist. That’s despite—spending four hours a day on social media, as more than half of respondents to a new survey say is normal.

Scholars have been sounding the alarm about these problems for several years. Indeed, we devoted an entire chapter to toxicity online in our book “The Power of Us“. In the book, we describe a clever experiment that offers causal evidence that Facebook increases polarization and reduces well being. A group of economists led by Hunt Allcott decided to find out what would happen if they paid people to leave Facebook for four weeks in advance of the 2018 US midterm elections. They paid more than a thousand volunteers to log off the social network for a few weeks and compared them to a control group of volunteers who continued using Facebook.

This experimental design allowed the researchers to detect the influence of using Facebook on polarization and other potential harms…or, more accurately, whether ceasing to use the platform reduces these problems.

Not only did the volunteers who logged off Facebook report an increase in their psychological well-being, but they became less politically polarized (across a variety of measures). Remarkably, the reduction in polarization from logging off Facebook for a single month was equivalent to nearly half the amount polarization has increased in the US since the mid-1990s!

In defense of Facebook, they are certainly not the only platform exacerbating social conflict by amplifying polarizing content and misinformation. We recently published a review of the research on the topic and found that Twitter/X is even more polarized than Facebook or WhatsApp in some countries. And the effects are mixed—one study in Bosnia, for example, suggests that Facebook might help expose people to different perspectives if their real life social networks are homogenous.

But when this social media technology was introduced to the Marubo tribe deep in the Amazon via access to Elon Musk’s Starlink it revealed the same basic pattern we have seen over and over again in many studies. Members of this small community quickly became obsessed with social media to the extend that the community had to shut down access to the internet each day to ensure they would hunt and gather enough food for their own survival.

More strikingly, it also spurred the kind polarization we saw in our American samples. According to the NYT “Elon Musk’s Starlink has connected an isolated tribe to the outside world — and divided it from within.” I described this natural experiment a few months ago on Andrew Yang’s podcast, which you can watch below:

In the United States, where antipathy toward out-group partisans is at a 40-year high and often seems like a sectarian conflict, social media amplifies existing disagreements, facilitates the spread of conspiracy theories, and allows for the organization of anti-democratic activities (like the January 6th insurrection). But the Amazon example also illustrates that this technology can have a massive disruptive influence even in a community without these political dynamics.

This technology poses a serious problem for public health, as well. As Biden’s Press Secretary noted in July, twelve people produced 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. At the time, all of them remained active on Facebook despite some being banned on other platforms (including ones that Facebook owns!). Indeed, news exposure from Facebook was one of the single biggest predictors of vaccine hesitancy in the United States—with people who only got their news from Facebook expressing greater vaccine hesitancy than Fox News viewers.

New research suggests that there may be some alternatives. A group of researchers from Stanford developed a novel method for reranking social media feeds. They found that increasing exposure to antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity posts in the newsfeed increases affective polarization and negative emotions, whereas decreasing exposure reduces them (see figure below). These changes were comparable in size to 3 years of change in United States affective polarization.

As political polarization and societal division become increasingly linked to social media activity, these findings provide a potential pathway for platforms to address these challenges through algorithmic interventions. These interventions may result in algorithms that not only reduce partisan animosity but also promote greater social trust and healthier democratic discourse across party lines.

It’s unlikely that everyone would be willing to take a four week vacation from Facebook. But this research suggests that changes to algorithmic feeds can mitigate some of the harms of social media. There is a growing awareness that people need to take this research more seriously and think about the potential costs to society given the impact of Facebook, X, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms.

The problem with social media platforms is that many of their design features and algorithms are optimized for engagement, rather than accuracy, cooperation, or other civic values—including the values that promote a healthy democracy. It is increasingly clear that denying the body of internal and external research about these issues is simply no longer an option for Meta or the rest of us.

Catch up on the last one…

If you missed our live event last month, read on to hear more about our advance screening to the AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist!

The Power of Us

Reflections on The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

“This is the last mistake we’ll ever get to make” — Aza Raskin…

Read more

4 months ago · 13 likes · 6 comments · Center for Conflict + Coop., Jay Van Bavel, and Anni Sternisko

“This is the last mistake we’ll ever get to make” — Aza Raskin

This week, we curated a diverse audience of over 150 experts—ranging from academics, journalists, and tech—to join us for a special screening of The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (which is now out in theaters!). We also included several newsletter subscribers who joined us in person.

After the screening, Anni hosted a panel discussion with Jay, the author of The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt, and Academy Award-winning producer Jonathan Wang. The room was buzzing afterwards and we decided to share a recap of the discussion to share with the rest of the world

While much of today’s conversation focuses on how AI (Artificial Intelligence) will shape the future. We took a step back and asked a different question: How can we guide AI toward a future we want, and how do we keep that future human?

“The rare feeling of being in a room assembled with real purpose, where the aim was not simply to generate more noise around AI, but to think more carefully about what this moment demands of us.” — Event attendee, Paul Gimenez

Our Key Take-aways:

1) Watch the documentary, but don’t watch it alone

Is it a super accessible primer on the promise and perils of AI that your family should see? Yes. — Event attendee

We have been studying the psychology of technology for over a decade, but the documentary rattled many of us in a new way. Watching together, we were on a roller coaster of despair, excitement, and hope. Jay said his first reaction was existential terror. His second reaction was hope—especially when people spoke about collective action.

This is a huge problem that will require a lot of collective action (…) hearing everyone react to it made it feel like we were all (…) reaching a common ground. — Event attendee

2) AI will supercharge the good and the bad

AI can potentially help us solve climate change, find a cure for cancer, and offer children around the globe access to individualized, high-quality tutoring. Yet, the same powerful technology can advance bioweapons, feed children sexualized content, and erode our shared understanding of truth. The two outcomes are intrinsically intertwined.

Jay and Jonathan Haidt have written a lot about how tech companies are incentivized to maximize attention because this keeps users on their platforms and engage more. But this can have a number of downstream consequences, including: polarization, distorted norms, and declining adolescent mental health. Meta just lost two trials this week: A $370 million lawsuit over child sexploitation and another $4.2 million for creating addictive design features that harm users.

I expect it will become essential viewing for anyone trying to think seriously about artificial intelligence and its human consequences.— Event attendee

AI may perpetuate this problem: In a set of studies, led by Steven Rathje, Jay finds that people enjoy interacting more with sycophantic chatbots (chatbots that validate beliefs indiscriminately) vs. more balanced chatbots which led to more extreme political beliefs. And a new study came out this week showing that AI chatbots are 50% more sycophantic than humans. The authors concluded “that seemingly innocuous design and engineering choices can result in consequential harms”. This is a recipe for disaster.

3) Misaligned incentives and the psychology of AI arms races

The documentary explains that there is no good AI vs. bad AI. The promise and peril are inextricably linked and it is therefore the underlying incentive structures that we have to understand and guide. And these incentives are currently steering us in the wrong direction, creating a race similar to the nuclear arms race during the cold war; companies and countries are incentivized to cut corners in AI safety to avoid losing the race.

What future should we thrive for and how do we get there?

The documentary challenged us to reflect on what future we want and what it means to be human.

As we have seen with social media, it is difficult to predict the impact of new technology. Social media played a key role in democratic movements such as the Arab Spring, but it was also linked to the Rohingya genocide. We need to learn from that and design the technology to avoid these risks, rather than dealing with the damage to individuals and society in hindsight.

Jonathan Haidt urged us to create resilient societies with a strong immune system to buffer unpredicted stressors. Societies that have institutions that can react fast and civilians that have moral maturity and wisdom. This is a tall order for our current political leadership so the burden will fall on each of us to advocate for better solutions.

Psychological research can help us get there. For instance, the study by Jay and Steve also found that engaging with sycophantic chatbots did not increase belief extremity among participants who scored high in intellectual humility—these individuals were more receptive to chatbots who gave them critical feedback and a well rounded view of an issue.

The documentary producer, Jonathan Wang, spoke about the need to focus on human beauty and creativity. In a world that gets more and more complex and noisy from the abundance of content, people are craving meaning, beauty, and genuine social connections—uniquely human experiences. Human-made art and story telling rather than synthetic and hyperpersonalized content may be one way to get there.

4) The psychology of collective action

Changing incentives and institutionalizing alternatives requires coordination and collaboration at an unprecedented scale. As the world is entering an era of democratic instability, intergroup conflict, geopolitical isolationism, and distrust this may seem impossible. But psychological research and practical experience can help us come together.

We have studied intergroup conflict for several decades and found that a shared sense of identity and superordinate goals can encourage people to collaborate instead of compete. Research also finds that changing social norms may be a powerful tool to mitigate selfish behavior. For instance, a study conducted in Finland found that Finish students were less susceptible to selfish behavior, likely because Finland scores high on social norms of cooperation.

One of the biggest contribution of the movie is that it gives us a common language and knowledge around AI and how it affects us personally and society at large. Common knowledge is essential for breaking pluralistic ignorance and coordinating action. Jay noted that our own research finds that the overwhelming majority of people want transparent algorithms and they want control over these algorithms (see figure below).

If we are largely on the same page, you may ask how we can possibly rally people? The PhD student in our lab—Danielle Goldwert—is studying this question for her dissertation. She finds that a feeling of collective efficacy is critical to mobilize people. This sentiment is echoed in historic events like the civil rights movement:

Agency and hope

Claiming our agency was one of the biggest themes of the movie and the panel discussion. Hopelessness is the enemy of change. Indeed, one study finds that sense of agency predicted collective action, but only among groups that also scored high in hope.

How do we find hope?

A recent poll finds that 80% of U.S. adults believe the government should maintain rules for AI safety and data security, even if it means developing AI capabilities more slowly. Recently, the U.S. Congress voted 99-to-1 to strike down a bill proposal that would limit state-level regulation of AI In such a deeply polarized country this should give us hope. We can agree on things, we just need to find the same language and collaboration to get things done.

Our panelist Jonathan Haidt said that it is the most exciting time to be a social psychologist. We couldn’t agree more. Our field has all the tools to study these issues. Understanding these dynamics may prove very helpful for taking action. You can build your own understanding by watching the movie, talking about it with your friends and family, and becoming a part of the conversation.

The documentary will be released nationwide in theaters March 27. Catch it in your local theater and find out where you are on the Apocaloptimist Scale.

We thank the NYU Arts and Science Office of Research and Focus Features for their partnership in making this event possible.

Notes of the week

This screening was the first in a broader series of events we’ll be opening up to newsletter subscribers, including online courses for premium subscribers led by Jay and Dom, so keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

In the meantime, Jay was interviewed on NPR's Hidden Brain about the power of social identity. We often think of beliefs and decisions as individual choices. But in many cases, they are shaped by our social identities. When people join groups, they don’t just coordinate behavior—they begin to see the world through a shared lens.

This has profound implications for: leadership & conformity, organizational culture, intergroup polarization, and collective action. The themes we discussed in this very newsletter about AI. But social identity also helps explain why changing minds can be so difficult: you’re often engaging with identity, not just information.

If you’re interested, you can listen to the full discussion here.

Catch up on the last one…

"Success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. But it could also be the last – unless we learn how to avoid the risks".

This quote is from famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, but it almost perfectly sums up the new documentary: THE AI DOC: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. It has been described as the most urgent movie of our time.

We will be hosting an exclusive pre-release screening of the upcoming AI documentary at New York University on Tuesday, March 24 at 6:30 pm. And we are giving away free tickets to subscribers of this newsletter! Yes, that’s you!

Get a sneak preview of what is likely going to be the most talked about documentary of the year then stick around for a conversation we are hosting with the Academy Award winning producer, Jonathan Wang, and NYT # Bestselling author of The Anxious Generation, Jon Haidt. We promise to keep things spicy!

From the Academy Award®-winning filmmakers behind Everything Everywhere All at Once and Navalny; a father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with all this AI insanity. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a hand-made, eye-opening documentary about the most powerful technology humanity has ever created... and what’s at stake if we get it wrong.

You can watch the trailer here (we watched the movie ourselves and it’s a bit terrifying):

As we mentioned above, the screening will be followed immediately by a panel discussion: The Center for Conflict and Cooperation’s Co-Directors (Jay Van Bavel and Anni Sternisko), will be joined by Jonathan Wang (Academy Award-winning producer) and Jonathan Haidt (NYU Professor and Author of The Anxious Generation).

Much of today’s conversation focuses on how A.I. will shape the future. We will take a step back and ask a different question: How can we guide A.I. toward a future we want, and how do we keep that future human? We have been studying AI in our lab for the past few years and the technology is rapidly developing. Now is the time to have a conversation about what we as individuals and society want from AI.

We will also be taking questions for the audience, so this is a chance for you to be part of the conversation.

If you want to join us, please Register by Sunday, March 22nd, 2026

Paid subscribers: Claim your free ticket here.
Free subscribers: Enter the lottery for a chance to win one of a limited number of tickets here. We will try to give tickets to as many people as possible.

This screening is the first in a broader series of events we’ll be opening up to paid newsletter subscribers, including online courses led by Jay and Dom, so keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

If you can’t make it to our screening, go catch it at your local movie theater. THE AI DOC will be released in U.S. theaters on March 27th. The initial reviews are excellent so we encourage everyone to check it out.

Catch up on the last one…

In a new book, How to Disagree Better, Harvard University public policy professor, Dr. Julia Minson, argues that most of us have been approaching disagreement the wrong way. You can present your case with bulletproof logic. You can share compelling data. You can explain exactly why you’re right. And somehow, the other person digs in even deeper.

She argues that the best frameworks for disagreement that are grounded in scientific evidence are the ones that focus on language. The H.E.A.R. strategy acknowledges the counterpart while making your own point. It’s also important that people increase their use of positive language (rather than words like “don’t”, “never” and “no”) and emphasize agreement. These strategies create a bridge and a sense of empathy and respect.

Click here to learn more about How to Disagree Better and order a copy now! Plus, we are giving away 5 free physical copies to The Power of Us subscribers. To enter the giveaway, check out the details at the bottom of this newsletter.

What does your book teach us about social identity or group dynamics?

My book offers evidence-based approaches for effectively navigating disagreement. People’s beliefs are often correlated with their group identities, with group members sharing particular attitudes and convictions, and making unfounded assumptions about the attitudes and convictions of out-group members. To the extent that we can learn to have thoughtful, engaged, authentic conversations with people whose opinions we don’t share, we can start becoming more comfortable crossing group boundaries and making interesting connections with “the other side.”

What is the most important idea readers will learn from your book?

There are a lot of books out there on navigating conflict and disagreement, but very few of them are based on rigorous empirical science. As a result, we do some things right, but also waste time on ineffective approaches. I want people to know that there is a growing experimental science of conflict and if they follow the research they will save themselves time and drama.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned from doing research in this area is that our mental efforts in disagreement do very little to improve outcomes. Well intentioned attempts to take our counterparts’ perspective, be more patient, be better listeners, feel more empathy, etc. don’t help as much as we expect because people don’t have access to our internal mental states. In order for a strategy to improve the outcome of a conversation, your counterpart must notice it so they can react appropriately. Instead, we need to use externally visible, easily interpretable behaviors to telegraph our intention to disagree constructively. The most salient and consistently interpreted behavior in disagreement is language. So that’s where we should all be focusing our efforts.

What is one factoid, statistic or study in your book that everyone should know?

Expressing a willingness to learn about your counterpart’s perspective in a way that is transparent and recognizable, is one of the most powerful tools we have found for de-escalating conflict. Yet, people are truly abysmal at doing this in the course of a conversation.

When we put Democrats and Republicans into a chat room and asked them to discuss an upcoming election, the vast majority of them did not express any kind of interest in the opposing view. A handful of people asked questions, but the questions were often rhetorical or sarcastic, not ones than an opposing partisan would interpret as an expression of curiosity. In later studies, we found that getting people to verbally express a desire to learn is incredibly difficult — people seem to see the willingness to learn from opponents as a low status move and they don’t want to sound submissive in a competitive situation. Giving them specific words and phrases to say helps, and so do financial incentives. But a non-trivial proportion of people still won’t do it, and feels proud of it.

What will readers find provocative or controversial about your book?

A common belief in the popular conflict literature is that people are threatened by opposing views and for this reason avoid engaging with them or updating their beliefs. However, my research finds that threat has little to do with it.

People don’t want to engage with opposing views because they think they are right. They have respected sources, experiences, and evidence to support their beliefs. When somebody tries to offer a contradictory perspective, the reaction is not a feeling of threat, but usually a feeling of irritation, anger, or even disgust because we are quite certain in the fundamental correctness of our own beliefs and don’t like our time being wasted. This interpretation is in line with research on Naive Realism and suggests a different approach for navigating disagreement than an approach grounded in the idea that disagreeing others are all feeling threatened by our brilliance.

Do you have any practical advice for people who want to apply these ideas (e.g., three tips for the real world)?

Yes! In a lot of my writing and teaching, I have advocated for the use of “conversational receptiveness” - a communication style that allows us to express our views in disagreement in a way that persuades our counterpart that we are actively engaging with their perspective even as we are making our own point. The easiest way to get started on conversational receptiveness is by using the H.E.A.R. framework.

• H = Hedge your claims, even when you feel very certain about your beliefs. It signals a recognition that there are some cases or some people who might support your opponent’s perspective.

• E = Emphasize agreement. Find some common ground even when you disagree on a particular topic. This does not mean compromising or changing your mind, but rather recognizing that most people in the world can find some broad ideas or values to agree on.

• A = Acknowledge the opposing perspective. Rather than jumping in to your own argument, devote a few seconds to restating the other person’s position to demonstrate that you did indeed hear and understand it.

• R = Reframing to the positive. Avoid negative and contradictory words, such as “no,” “won’t” or “do not.” At the same time, increase your use of positive words to change the tone of the conversation.

News and Updates

Jay is giving a talk at the Stanford Tech Impact & Policy Center on “Morality in the Anthropocene” on May 19th. You can attend in person or via zoom using this link.

🎁 Book Giveaway Details 📖

To enter Julia’s book giveaway for How to Disagree Better, either…

1. Be a paid subscriber to the newsletter. Paid subscribers are automatically entered into all our monthly book giveaways!

   You can subscribe or upgrade your subscription below.

2. If you are not a paid subscriber yet, make sure you have a free subscription and simply leave a comment answering one the questions below:

   Who is someone in your life (e.g., spouse, parent, child, team member) you disagree with often? Which component of H.E.A.R. can you focus on incorporating in your conversations with them?

   Note: Giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Enter before April 5th, 12 pm PST. Five winners will be selected at random and will recieve an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com on April 6th, 2026.

Catch up on the last one…

By 2001, the once-dominant Buckeyes had slipped into mediocrity. When Jim Tressel was hired to coach the team, he completely revamped how players earned a buckeye. He turned an individual competition into an approach that rewarded teamwork.

Instead of rewarding a player for scoring a t…

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