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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15 days 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

a month 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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21 days 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

a month 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…

Read more

a month 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

a month 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.

🎁 Book Giveaway Details [CLOSED] 📖

To enter George’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:

   When did you experience an increase in your creativity or innovation using one of the techniques described in the interview above?

3. This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. Enter before May 28th, 12 pm PST. Three winners were selected at random and received an email from powerofusbook@gmail.com on June 6th, 2026.

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 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

  Subscribe now

Catch up on the last one…

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.

Subscribe now

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.

This newsletter will continue to be the place where we can go deeper, think more openly, and stay in conversation with readers who care about these questions. If you are enjoying it, please share it with others.

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As always, subscribers get essays on identity, conflict, cooperation, and social change, new psychology research translated into plain language, practical insights for navigating division, leadership, and collective life, and updates on our latest writing, talks, interviews, and projects. Paid subscribers get extra perks like monthly ‘office hours’ to chat on a video call with with Jay and Dom, plus entries into monthly drawings for free books from the authors we interview.

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)

• In person events, like the AI Doc screening we hosted in New York City last month

• Free content, like the first chapter and chapter summaries from our book

  

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• Education materials, like our online syllabus, recommended readings, and videos

• Virtual courses for paid subscribers, where you can watch video lectures and then join us for live group discussions

If any of this sounds useful, we’d be happy to have you join our growing community. And we want you to tell us what else you want in the comments.

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.

Catch up on the last one…

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

2 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…

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3 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 touchdown, for instance, every player on the offensive unit would get a sticker if the team scored more than 24 points. And the coaching staff gave every player on the team a sticker after each win. Favoring teamwork over individual performance paid off almost immediately — the team not only won a national championship the following year, but the Buckeyes have been one of the most successful teams in the country ever since and are a threat to win the National Championship almost every year.

Although leaders are concerned with collective success, most organizations — from sports teams to universities to global companies — still focus on rewarding individual performance. General Electric CEO Jack Welch concocted the legendary “Rank and Yank” system to motivate employeers. The majority of Fortune 500 companies reward the most productive individuals, not the most effective groups or indispensable group members.

Rank and Yank guided talent assessments through a 3-step process:

1. Rank every employee’s job performance.

2. Use the rank-ordered list to identify a bottom segment of performers, usually 10%.

3. Fire those in the bottom segment.

Survivors then have their compensation calibrated according to where they fell on the rating curve. Or, as its also known, the Vitality Curve.

This Rank and Yank system uses fear and individual competition as motivators. While it creates a compliant workforce, there is little evidence of its success. If anything, it costs fortune in performance reviews and leads employees to "feel unmotivated and disengaged". We believe that leaders at these organizations are overlooking something fundamental about human nature — our groupish nature.

Human beings evolved in groups, and most of us still work in groups every day. Our affinity for groups is wired deeply into our basic biology. Indeed, humans are unique among primates in that we readily cooperate with in-group members — even if they are completely unknown to us. This is why sports fans can show up to a stadium and immediately share common purpose with 100,000 complete strangers.

Even more striking, research in our labs has found that the simple act of joining a group can produce a dramatic influence on brain function and behavior. At the mere flip of a coin, people readily befriend and place their trust in fellow in-group members. And our research has found that creating mixed-race groups can override implicit racial bias. Group identification is one ingredient that can bring strangers together.

Given that group membership is such a deeply rooted part of human nature and organizational success, a central element of leadership is the management of group identities. In short, great leaders are “Entrepreneurs of Identity”. They embrace our tribal nature and seek to shape the identity of their fellow group members. This social relationship between leaders and followers is at the heart of transformational leadership.

When a person starts to identify with a group, it triggers a fundamental shift in their goals. Events and decisions that were once evaluated with reference to oneself (“what’s in it for me?”) are now evaluated in reference to the group (“what does this mean for us?”). In fact, research shows that even otherwise selfish individuals often become cooperative — and even altruistic — when they identify with a group. Once their self becomes fused with the group, they are motivated to pursue what they understand to be the goals of the group.

Group identity can explain a range of remarkable behaviors, ranging from putting in long hours at work to making the ultimate sacrifice for one’s country. Many experiments have now shown that members will act to benefit to their groups, even when doing so exacts a personal cost. One reason is because we share in the success and rewards of our in-group members — we bask in their reflected glory and feel pleasure when they receive a reward. As such, the key to leading groups is fostering an environment in which individual group members deeply identify with the team.

To cultivate a strong group identity, leaders can take the following steps: (1) ensure the group satisfies basic the psychological needs of individual members, (2) generates super-ordinate goals, (3) rewards individual contributions to the group, and (4) values dissent.

1. Focus on employees’ social needs. Organizations traditionally use financial rewards to motivate employees, but great leaders also fulfill the social needs of their employees. Compelling groups satisfy one or more fundamental human needs, including the need to belong, obtain status, feel distinctive, and maintain certainty or control. By balancing individuals’ need to belong with their desire to stand out, a leader can build a sense of “optimal distinctiveness” among group members. Leaders seeking to increase members’ group identification need to first consider the basic social needs of their members and then determine how the group might do a better job fulfilling them.

2. Set superordinate goals. Recent neuroscience studies suggest that cooperation is inherently rewarding. But many people will only cooperate with fellow in-group members. In many organizations, the loyalty of employees lies with their department or project team, rather than the whole organization. While internal divisions can be useful at times — a bit of healthy competition between departments can drive people to work harder — employees can lose sight of organizational goals or may even sabotage other departments. Visionary leaders communicate the superordinate goals of the organization and explain how all the divisions, departments, and project teams are necessary for achieving these goals.

3. Reward both collective and individual effort. Leaders need to reward behavior that advances the goals of the organization, rather than the individual. Effective leaders provide bonuses, recognition, raises, flexibility, and opportunities, based on the entire team’s performance. To avoid free-riding (when team members shirk their personal responsibility), individual rewards should also be given to individuals who make important contributions to the team’s success. This rewards indispensable team members — the unsung heroes who work late, cover for colleagues, and enhance the success of the group. Combining individual and collective rewards can promote stronger group identity and ensure that individual members are encouraged and motivated (not only financial, but also socially) to pursue the team’s goals and help the team succeed.

Group cohesion can also be a weakness — suppressing dissent and creativity, and creating mindless conformity. How can leaders capitalize on the benefits of group cohesion while avoiding its drawbacks?

4. Avoid the downsides of conformity by valuing dissent. Many people assume that dissenters are trying to damage the group. But our research suggests that committed group members are the ones who are most likely to speak up when things are going badly for the group because they care deeply about group success. Thus, constructive dissent needs to be explicitly valued in organizations to avoid groupthink and bad decision-making. Leaders need to make it easy for group members to speak out against bad ideas. For instance, leaders can designate certain group members to act as devil’s advocate to ensure the group reaches the best possible decision. To create a culture where constructive feedback and innovation flourishes, leaders should also encourage their employees to pursue organizational goals rather than simply follow organizational norms.

The bottom line is that leaders need to understand and harness the tribal psychology that is deeply imprinted onto human nature. The ease with which people categorize the social world into groups speaks to our nature, and provides a powerful potential tool for leaders. Our capacity to identify with groups provides the foundations for cooperation with others — even complete strangers.

Notes of the week

New public opinion survey 🗳️

The U.S. is the only country surveyed where more adults describe the morality of others living in the country as bad than good. Canada is on the opposite end of the spectrum: they overwhelmingly see their neighbors as morally good.

Polarization and social media

The more active people are on social media, the more polarized they are.

The opinions of the these extreme users are filling your newsfeed, but they are not representative of most citizens or even most social media users — who are far less polarized! This creates false perceptions of social norms and stereotypes, creating a funhouse mirror effect.

Catch up on the last one…

Last week, we shared a column from Dr. Mickey Inzlicht’s substack on stereotype threat and its replicability. We received notes from other scholars in the field and have linked a response from Mary Murphy of below from her expert perspective on the topic.

Culture Catalyst with Mary C. Murphy

The Report of Stereotype Threat's Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Today I’m feeling some way about our field of social psychology. This past weekend, we had a terrific disciplinary conference (Society for Personality and Social Psychology- SPSP) in which I felt connected and surrounded by community dedicated to understanding some of the most important problems of our time—and bringing our tools to bear to investigate …

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4 months ago · 32 likes · 7 comments · Mary Murphy

The Power of Us

The Downfall of Stereotype Threat

This week we are hosting a column from one of favorite professors from our graduate school days—Dr. Mickey Inzlicht, the Director of the Work & Play Lab at the University of Toronto. Mickey is an expert on self-regulation, identity, and discrimination, and has some of the most interesting—and provocative—perspectives on the big ideas in our field…

Read more

4 months ago · 13 likes · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel and Michael Inzlicht

One of the reasons we loved Mickey as grad students is because he would share all his opinions and he welcomed disagreement. He was fun to debate and never got defensive. This made science discussions with him a lot of fun. He now writes the “Speak Now, Regret Later” substack where he shares his controversial takes on the field of social psychology and often responds to his critics.

Speak Now Regret Later

An unfiltered exploration of psychology, culture, and the world through the eyes of an impulsive yet remorseful professor

By Michael Inzlicht

We invited him to share his controversial column on the downfall of Stereotype Threat. When he started at the University of Toronto, Mickey was most known for his research on stereotype threat and that line of research was among the most prominent ideas in the field. We remember walking through SPSP during graduate school and seeing countless posters on implicit attitudes, ego depletion, and stereotype threat—it seemed like everyone was studying at least one of those topics.

In the last decade, all of those topics have come under a great deal of scrutiny. A mix of failed replications and methodological criticisms has called into question these bodies of research. (Jay has a chapter on the “replication crisis” in social psychology that you can read here). And, while there is still ongoing debate about the scope and scale of these ideas, we wanted to share Mickey’s perspective on the topic since it touches on the core themes of our newsletter (i.e., identity and group dynamics).

Another day, another idol falls.

This one has been teetering for years, so the collapse didn’t come as a shock. But that doesn’t make it any less painful.

I’m talking about stereotype threat, a once-revolutionary idea that shaped how social psychologists thought about identity, achievement, and inequality. For decades, it inspired research, drove interventions, and promised insights into the invisible forces that constrain human potential.

I still remember seeing its most eloquent advocate, Stanford University’s Claude Steele, deliver a keynote address in 1999 at the annual convention of what was then called the American Psychological Society. It was my first ever conference, my first trip to Denver, and Steele was nothing short of magnetic. Charismatic and at the height of his powers, he commanded the stage like no academic I had ever seen. He delivered his message with the kind of confidence that makes you believe science can change the world. Professor Steele was a rock star, and I was as giddy seeing him on stage as I was seeing Kurt Cobain on stage a few years earlier.

What is Stereotype Threat?

The concept of stereotype threat, first proposed by Claude Steele in the early 1990s, posited that individuals who are part of a negatively stereotyped group can, in certain situations, experience anxiety about confirming those stereotypes, leading paradoxically to underperformance, thus confirming the disparaging stereotype. The initial research was groundbreaking.

In 1995, Steele and his student Joshua Aronson—who went on to become my postdoc supervisor years later—demonstrated that the notorious Black-white gap in academic performance could be partially closed when negative stereotypes impugning Black people’s intelligence were made irrelevant. When Black students at Stanford University were told that a test was diagnostic of intellectual ability, they performed worse than their white counterparts. However, when this stereotype threat was ostensibly removed—by simply framing the test as a measure of problem-solving rather than intelligence—the performance gap between Black and white students nearly vanished.

Suddenly, here was an explanation for why certain groups didn’t perform as well in academic settings. And it wasn’t just race; follow-up studies looked at women in math and science. Women, who dominate men in most academic disciplines, underperform in STEM fields because they were regularly, albeit subtly, reminded of the stereotype that women aren’t good at math, or so the story goes. The idea felt revolutionary, hopeful even, because it suggested that these vexing performance gaps could be addressed by changing people’s immediate environments rather than accepting them as fixed outcomes, inherent to the groups themselves

These findings were exhilarating. Before long, stereotype threat was not only the darling of social psychology, but it also became the darling of the political left who now had an answer to prevailing views of group differences held by the political right. This is partly because shortly before stereotype threat took its turn in the spotlight, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein published The Bell Curve, which resulted in a media firestorm that has had repercussions to this day. Not only did the book discuss racial differences in intelligence as real and consequential—and not mere products of culturally biased IQ tests—it suggested that a non-negligible factor in this gap was due to biological differences. This thesis was so toxic that the octogenarian Murray is still considered a pariah, shouted down and deplatformed from talks he tries to deliver at respectable colleges to this day.

Stereotype threat, in contrast, was a breath of fresh air. It promised that group differences were malleable, not fixed. They could be explained as momentary apprehension, akin to the nerves that might cause an elite athlete to choke on competition day. Yes, these group differences still have consequences, but now we have a remedy—change the situation so that stereotypes are less likely to be in the air and watch as all the Black students and female mathematicians rise to the top.

I too was swept up by this mania. I studied stereotype threat as a PhD student and published some of the first papers on the topic. My dissertation and very first publication suggested that subtle aspects of a room—like how many men and women were in a math classroom—could be enough to evoke stereotype threat and undermine performance. Because my field became captivated by stereotype threat, this meant that I was quickly offered jobs, grants, tenure, and acclaim. I edited a book on stereotype threat and was asked to add my name and research to briefs delivered to the US Supreme Court. My career benefitted immensely.

The Replicators are Coming

Then things started going sideways. And not just for stereotype threat.

It’s all very complicated. Lots of strands in old Duder’s head. But here’s the skinny. In the early 2010s, psychology started looking inward, asking hard questions about the robustness of our most cherished findings. This happened because in the early 2000s, our best journals regularly included studies that were ludicrous and hard to believe. For example, researchers made dubious claims about the role of blood glucose and self-control, and found positive evidence for these claims, despite their biological impossibility. A paper was published in social psychology’s most prestigious journal claiming evidence for clairvoyance, essentially offering a ringer for a ringer. Ludicrous. If these impossible ideas were generating support with the standard methods of social psychology, maybe our methods are not what we thought they were.

A small cadre of reformers then started raising awareness that all was not right in how we conducted our science: we did not bother replicating important studies, we were misusing and abusing our statistical tools, and we did not publish all our studies—particularly the failed ones. And when some brave scientists decided to audit the field by closely replicating many studies, only about a quarter from social psychology could be successfully replicated. Since these dark days, the field has changed immensely, and we’re slowly producing more respectable science today.

Nonetheless, the entire field’s evidentiary basis was now suspect. After all, they were produced by methods that we now consider questionable. Stereotype threat was no different. I would love to say that stereotype threat was an exception, that it survived replication attempts and other audits, and that a beloved idea can still be used to counter damaging claims about group differences. But new data now reveal what many of us suspected for at least ten years: stereotype threat does not replicate, and it does not undermine academic performance in the ways we thought.

This new data emerged from what is called a Registered Replication Report. This was no ordinary replication study; it used the gold standard of scientific rigor. Conducted by multiple labs across the U.S. and Europe, and led by Andrea Stoevenbelt this study (still a preprint) was preregistered (meaning all methods and analyses were specified before the data were collected) and involved over 1,500 participants. It replicated the exact procedures of a well-known stereotype threat study published in 2005 by Mike Johns, Toni Schmader, and Andy Martens—all colleagues and friends I deeply respect.

The original study had found that women performed worse on math tests when reminded of gender stereotypes but performed on par with men when they were instead taught about stereotype threat. The idea was that awareness of the phenomenon of stereotype threat helped mitigate its effects, which was why this original paper was so influential: it offered a simple intervention to close the gender-gap in math performance. The replication was designed to be thorough, with consistent methodology across sites and a sample size large enough to detect even small effects.

Despite following these procedures to the letter, the replication found no effect. Women who were ostensibly in a threat condition didn’t perform any worse than those who were instead taught about threat. And the difference between men and women’s math performance remained consistent across the board, regardless of how the test was framed. The stereotype threat effect, once thought to be so robust, just wasn’t there.

What Does This Mean for Stereotype Threat?

Does one failed replication debunk the entire theory of stereotype threat? No, of course not. But it’s not just one study. There are now multiple failed replications, large-sample studies that found no effect, and at least one bias-corrected meta-analysis pointing to the same conclusion: if stereotype threat exists, it is far weaker and more inconsistent than we originally believed. I no longer believe it is real, but you can make up your own mind.

I have seen some people online suggest the reason this failed to replicate is that women are no longer stereotyped as not being good at math. While I do not disagree that cultural stereotypes about women in STEM might have changed since 2005 when the original paper was first published, I’m skeptical this is the main culprit behind this non-replication. First, women remain heavily outnumbered in STEM fields. The latest statistics indicate that women comprise only 25% of STEM workers in Canada and 27% in the US. And, depending on what is counted as STEM—I have heard some argue that psychology should be included—this number might be a lot lower. So, the stereotype about what is and what is not a female job might still be around, as much as we’d like it not to be.

Second, for years, many of us have suspected that something wasn’t right. There were warning signs: tiny sample sizes, flexible analyses, and implausibly large effect sizes given the relatively modest interventions being tested. In some cases, stereotype threat effects were found only in very specific handpicked samples—another red flag. It turns out that many of the original studies were conducted at a time when researchers—and I count myself here—were less stringent about methodological rigor.

Let’s be honest: that last sentence was far too generous. Many of us engaged in practices that, in hindsight, were borderline dishonest. We abused experimenter degrees of freedom, engaged in questionable research practices, p-hacked, massaged our data—you pick the euphemism. In contrast, this new replication study followed the most up-to-date best practices in psychological science, eliminating room for flexibility in analysis or results interpretation.

In my opinion—one that I have shared widely over the years—studies like this do more than demonstrate that stereotype threat is not replicable. They raise unsettling questions about the broader field of social psychology. If stereotype threat is not real, not robust, what else was I taught in my introduction to psychology classes that is also suspect? Despite all our improvements that help us in the present and future, we still have a massive backlog of studies from the past that we need to reckon with. Yes, the future looks bright, but we need to have the courage to put our most cherished findings under the spotlight.

The bill of reckoning for social psychology is past due.

A Reckoning…and a Path Forward

The fall of stereotype threat is not just about one theory collapsing: it’s a moment of reckoning for the entire field of social psychology. Stereotype threat was more than an idea — it was a promise, a way to understand inequality and to imagine solutions. Its failure forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about how science is done and what happens when beloved ideas turn out to be wrong.

But this reckoning, painful as it is, should not lead us to despair. The scientific process thrives on self-correction, on challenging old paradigms and building stronger ones in their place. What we’re experiencing now is science doing what it’s supposed to do: correcting itself. If we care about understanding the human mind and addressing real-world inequalities, we need to keep asking hard questions and demanding better evidence—not just for stereotype threat but for every cherished finding.

For me, letting go of stereotype threat has been both humbling and liberating. It has forced me to recalibrate how I think about research, advocacy, and the stories we tell about human potential. It’s a reminder that science, at its best, is about progress, not protecting idols.

We also had our own experience with Stereotype Threat research as graduate students and thought we’d share it for the first time:

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While some Americans praised Bad Bunny’s performance as a pivotal moment in American culture which expressed the value of connecting with one’s community and celebrating one’s heritage, others were outraged. Backlash following the performance forced Bad Bunny to clear his Instagram account due to the immense volume of online harassment he received.

Many football fans felt that the performance was not traditionally American enough and that a Puerto Rican artist does not belong on stage at the Super Bowl Halftime show. On Truth Social, Donald Trump called the performance a “slap in the face to our country” and added, “nobody understands a word this guy is saying”. (According to U.S. Census data, Spanish is the second most common language spoken in the U.S., with over 41 million speakers.)

Boxer Jake Paul’s call to turn off the halftime show referred to Bad Bunny as a “fake American citizen” and received 125,000 likes on X. These posts and many more fueled animosity towards Bad Bunny and Hispanic Americans in general. Although Bad Bunny is an American citizen, for many he was not “prototypically” American enough and therefore undeserving of the spotlight.

Racial dynamics in the U.S. are complicated and require nuance to understand. However, there are two psychological theories that can help explain some of the reactions to Bad Bunny’s performance.

1. Stereotyping models quantify the ways different groups are perceived in society and visualize the status quo. Researchers have found that there are systematic ways people stereotype based on different traits like foreignness, warmth, and competence.

2. Perceptions of status threat are likely at play. Status threat is the perception that one’s social group is losing status, power, or cultural dominance relative to other groups. Perceived status threat can trigger preferences to maintain the status quo, specifically when a group that is usually dominant in society feels threatened.

Perceptions of status threat can be triggered by a shift in racial demographics, or as in Bad Bunny’s case, greater representation in pop culture and the media. Bad Bunny’s trajectory has made big waves in the entertainment industry as of late — his latest record, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS was the top album globally on Spotify and was awarded album of the year at the 2026 Grammys.

How stereotypes shape what it takes to be considered American

At the end of his performance, Bad Bunny shouted “God Bless America!” before naming countries across the Americas as he and other performers crossed the field carrying their flags. This display has been viewed as a moment of decentering the United States as the default for defining America, and shined a light on all countries in North, Central and South America. This reframing of “America” is rooted in a larger question: who is considered “American” and who belongs?

Within all societies, racial groups are subject to stereotypes that influence how they are viewed and treated. Research finds that when group perceptions are measured by ratings of inferiority-superiority and foreign-American, distinct patterns emerge.

In a set of studies conducted in 2017, researchers asked participants “To what extent are [racial group] seen as foreign or American in U.S. society?” (1 = Very Foreign, 7 = Very American). They found that White Americans were seen as the most American, followed by Black Americans, then Native Americans/American Indians. Hispanic/Latino Americans were viewed as relatively foreign. White Americans were also rated more patriotic than other racial groups.

These group dynamics can, in part, explain why a Puerto Rican artist performing at the Super Bowl felt “not American enough” to some. It challenges the status quo by spotlighting a culture and group of people who are marginalized in U.S. society. A performance on a stage as big as the Super Bowl may imply that Hispanic Americans’ cultural presence is increasing and could threaten other groups’ positions on the social hierarchy.

The role of status threat and implications of a Hispanic population surge

Recent U.S. Census data predict that by the year 2045, people of color will outnumber White individuals. The implications of a majority-minority country are important to understand in order to build a more inclusive future for all, but research in this area has suggested that the future may be difficult to navigate. Turning Point USA’s “All American” halftime show as an alternative to Bad Bunny’s performance foreshadows a deep divide.

This begs the question: Will the future be one where Americans embrace diversity and celebrate the U.S.’s multifaceted identities and cultures, or one marked with heightened conflict, racism, and xenophobia?

A 2019 Pew Research study revealed positive perceptions of racial and ethnic diversity, hinting that amicable attitudes will shape the nation’s future. The nationally representative survey of U.S. adults showed that more than three-fourths of Americans (77%) agreed that racial and ethnic diversity is at least “somewhat good” for the country. The study found some variation in opinion among White (55%), Black (59%) and Hispanic (60%) individuals. However, other psychological studies suggest otherwise…

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The test is also being used to determine our love life. Yes, people actually do put their Myers-Briggs category on their Tinder profiles and funders gave 1 million dollars to develop an app that matches couples based on their Myers-Briggs personality types. The test also makes a pretty regular appearance on dating profiles and NYT Wedding announcements, like a charming young couple below who decided to evaluate their romantic capability:

While the Myers-Briggs test is telling people who to hire and marry, scientists hate it. As Laith Al-Shawaf notes, “any psychologist will tell you, it’s mostly bullshit.”

Then why is it so popular?

We explain why people are suckers for terrible psychology tests—from the Meyers-Briggs to the Zodiac—and how you can assess your personality with a scientific valid measure. We also share our own personality test scores, for the curious.

But let’s start with the MBTI. The test was develop during World War II by an American mother and daughter who were fascinated by Carl Jung’s 1921 book “Psychological Types”. They created a series of 93 forced-choice questions, like the following: “Are you more (a) realistic than speculative or b) speculative than realistic.

Based on these answers, the MBTI categorizes people into a group based on four personality dimensions (the sample question above is used to determine if you are sensing or intuitive):

• Extraversion (E) or introversion (I), which measures whether you get energy from outwardly focused action like socializing or from inwardly focused activities like quiet reflection

• Intuition (N) or sensing (S), which measures how much you see big picture patterns rather than focusing on sensory information from direct experience

• Thinking (T) or feeling (F), which measures whether you make decisions using logic rather than by focusing on feelings

• Judging (J) or perceiving (P), which measures your preference for structure rather than spontaneity

After you complete the Myers-Briggs test, you get sorted into one of 16 categories. Each group is often given an appealing name: the “logical pragmatist”, “compassionate facilitator”, or “insightful visionary” — providing a perfect new title for a professional development seminar or your online dating profile.

Another perk is that you get matched with famous people (most of whom are long since deceased and never completed the test). Are you an “ISFP” like Bob Dylan and Rihanna or an “INTP” like Albert Einstein and Tina Fey?

We (Dom and Jay) both completed the test and were categorized as “Commanders” with an ENTJ personality type. This puts in in prestigious—and tyrannical—company, like Steve Jobs, Margaret Thatcher, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gordon Ramsay. Our editor, Yvonne, fared a bit better and was categorized as an INFP, like John Lennon and Princess Diana. Here is the MBTI test if you want to try it yourself. And remember that none of these historical figures probably ever completed the MBTI.

Despite the joy of being compared to celebrities, psychologists have repeatedly argued that the Myers-Briggs has dubious predictive ability and is grounded in debunked theory. To make matters worse, it’s unreliable. Which means that if you take the test more than once to learn more about your “true self”, it’s quite likely to give you different answers each time.

Another big problem is that these 16 categories contradict how contemporary psychologists think about personality. Most experts agree that human personality can be boiled down to five traits—the BIG 5: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and neuroticism. Each trait is a continuous dimension, so that someone can score high, low, or anywhere in between. To take the same Big 5 test for yourself, follow this link to take the 120-item measure.

A recent report in Scientific American compared the Meyers-Briggs to other personality scores, ranging from the Big 5 to Astrological signs (see their results in the figure below) to see how each predicted 37 life outcomes (see their full report for details), ranging from how many close friends they had to how often they exercised to how satisfied they were with life.

Here is what they found:

What is it about this scientific mess that people so readily buy into? We believe that one of the bugs that drives psychologists crazy is actually a feature that explains the test’s enduring popularity.

Unfortunately, however, it is quite hard to conceive of yourself in five-dimensional space. It’s also awkward to tell people at a conference, first date, or a job interview that you have a moderate score on extraversion, moderate-to-high on agreeableness and conscientiousness, high on openness, and moderate-to-low on neuroticism. This is hardly sparkling dinner party conversation!

This is why assigning people to Myers-Briggs’ categories is compelling. Scoring low on extraversion and high on openness doesn’t sound particularly impressive, but being a “mastermind” does. People would much rather claim a social identity that includes Sun Tzu, Isaac Newton, Jane Austen and Arthur Ashe (setting aside the absurd fact that several were deceased hundreds of years before the test was even invented).

The use of categories is a great marketing maneuver and a big part of the reason behind the popularity of many dubious personality tests from the Myers-Briggs to the infamous TIME Harry Potter Quiz or Cosmo’s quiz to help you learn what kind of lover you are. The same logic also applies to Astrology signs!

All these tests operate a bit like the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter, slotting us into different groups. People crave self-definition and social identities provide this for us. We are attracted to group memberships that provide both a sense of connection to people just like us and distinction from others—what Marilynn Brewer termed “Optimal Distinctiveness”. These groups fulfill multiple core social needs.

The ease with which people form group identities can be traced back to one of the most important studies in social psychology (we personally think it is the most important experiment in our field). In the minimal group experiments from the 1970s, people were randomly assigned to groups after completing a test of dubious merit, such as their ability to estimate the number of dots in an image or their preference for abstract art (e.g., Klee vs. Kandinsky).

Within minutes, they had created a new sense of identity and were treating their new in-group members very differently from out-group members. In fact, this research revealed that the mere act of being categorized as a member of a group was sufficient to cause discrimination. It also inspired on the of the most important theories in the social sciences—Social Identity Theory.

When we use personality tests that impose categories—like the Meyers Briggs or Astrology—we risk exaggerating the differences between groups and the similarities within them. When this occurs with other types of identities like race or gender, we typically call it “stereotyping” and we try to avoid it. When consultants do it in companies, they are exploiting the same social psychology and doing it on dubious scientific grounds to make a buck.

There is reason for caution when it comes to categorizing others too readily by personality as well. We might well fail to hire, promote, or even marry someone because they fall into a false category about which we make exaggerated assumptions. Even with the Meyers-Briggs, putting people into categories is the weakest use of the test. It is roughly as useful as astrology.

This is why organizations could do much better by creating other meaningful social identities. If you can create a sense of belonging around other social identities, people might feel less of a need to rely on these dubious tests to create a sense of self.

It is also why you should focus less on fictitious identities—like whether you are a Commander or an Aries—and more on real ones that matter. And if you do want to make romantic decisions based on personality, we highly recommend using a scientifically valid personality test like the Big 5.

For both men and women, their partner's conscientiousness predicts their own future job satisfaction, income, and likelihood of promotion, even after accounting for their own conscientiousness. There reason is because conscientious partners (both men and women) perform more household tasks, exhibit more pragmatic behaviors that their spouses are likely to emulate, and promote a more satisfying home life, enabling their spouses to focus more on work.

Choosing a partner is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. And relying on the Meyers-Briggs or the Zodiac is about the worst way you could make that decision.

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…

Happy 2026 Winter Olympics! We share profound examples of cross-cultural collaboration in last week’s post. With interesting anecdotes about displays of national identity and olympic village hook-ups.

The Power of Us

Competition is what we see. Cooperation is what makes it possible

In a touching display of empathy, the international figure skating community and fans rallied around Maxim Naumov. After a remarkable performance dedicated to his late parents (who were killed in a tragic plane crash in Washington, DC), he dropped to his knees and looked to the sky. The crowd of fans gave him an emotional standing ovation that transcended national team lines, illustrating the shared human experience of the athletes…

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4 months ago · 6 likes · Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych received widespread solidarity from other athletes after he used his platform to honor friends killed by the Russian invasion into his home county. While his actions led to a controversial disqualification by officials, many fellow Olympians and fans showed their support for his courage.

In one of the most unique examples of cross-country support involves a community of athletes from nations not traditionally known for winter sports. Cross-country skiers from 40 smaller nations formed a group chat—called Team Avalanche—to share technical tips, resources, and moral support. The members even started cashing in the same bedrooms during events. “For me, it’s like a family, it’s like a team”, said Indian skier Bhavani Thekkada.

These are just some of the examples of cross-national comraderie from the 2026 Milan Olympic Games. With competitors from nearly 100 countries and an estimated audience of 2 billion people around the globe, the Games provide a common experience—a shared moment of inspiration and enjoyment—for a huge swath of humanity. It’s a rare moment when the world stops and celebrates together.

Fostering a sense of solidarity among the world’s peoples is exactly what the Olympics are meant to be about. In fact, they create very explicit social norms around it. As the International Olympic Committee puts it:

Yet, the Olympics are also perhaps humanity’s most elaborate ritual of nationalism. From the Parade of Nations during the opening ceremony to the flags and national anthems that pay tribute to the medalists, national pride is everywhere on display. Many of these same countries competing together have a history of conflict, even war.

With fans draped in the colors of their home nation, flags waving in the air, and Olympic glory riding on every sport, it might trigger images of nationalistic violence. Yet it almost never does. Instead, people cheer together and there are numerous instances of mutual support across national boundaries.

How do the Olympics balance this tug-of-war between national pride and collective celebration? What is the psychological switch that allows people to fiercely compete for scarce resources while embracing their enemy?

This is called “The Olympic paradox” and it reveals how competition and cooperation can coexist in harmony. We think it’s also a powerful lesson for any community, organization or institution that wants to foster competition for excellence while maintaining a overarching sense of shared purpose.

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Over 65,000 fans are willing to spend roughly $4,000 a ticket to watch their favorite players fight for a Super Bowl ring (you can see what all the fuss is about in the image below). And the Super Bowl will generate a billion dollars in revenue (which is just a slice of the $25 Billion dollar industry that is the NFL). The psychology of fans is extremely lucrative.

There is extensive evidence that playing on the same sports team can bind people together in powerful ways. For instance, one study in a war torn region of Northern Iraq found that Christian players on mixed-religion soccer teams were more willing to train with Muslims in the future, vote for a Muslim to win a sportsmanship prize, and sign up for a mixed-religion team the next season. By sharing a group identity and working together, they were able to bridge what had seemed like an impossible divide.

And winning made everything better: Team success amplified these effects. Successful teams forged an especially strong sense of shared identity, and connections between teammates reducing patterns of discrimination for many months. It provided the first steps toward rebuilding a sense of community.

But the impact of the Super Bowl will extend far beyond the field. Fans from around the world will be watching. This singular event will have an impact on the sense of self for countless people. Indeed, it’s one of the rare moments in our society where it’s socially acceptable for grown men to cry in public.

But the Super Bowl might have the biggest impact on kids. Like baby goslings instinctively bonding with the first moving object they see after hatching, many children will become lifelong fans. It turns out the winning team can make an imprint on their soul that lasts a lifetime.

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“International House was my best experience while living in NYC, much better than my studies at Columbia University…”

What kind of institution could possibly provide a better learning experience than one of the most prestigious and well-resourced universities in the world?

We spent the last three years studying the culture of International House and believe it offers a model for how to create community and encourage dialogue across lines of difference. As any team, organization, or business knows, curating culture is key. Yet the culture that many places have created is one which makes difference a dirty word.

Just a few blocks north of Columbia University, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, sits International House. Founded over 100 years ago, International House–affectionately known as I-House by its residents–was the first global community of its kind.

More than a residency program and housing, it provided graduate students and young professionals from around the world a place to connect and learn from each other, as they studied or worked in NYC.

In 2023, we were invited to do an independent evaluation of the residential experience and whether it advances I-House’s mission to install “a lifelong dedication to cultural understanding [and] cultivate individuals who will help bridge the polarization, isolation, and division our world continues to face.“ With decades of experience studying intergroup relations, prejudice and discrimination, and political polarization in a wide range of educational contexts, we were skeptical that a relatively short-lived experience could generate such deep and lasting transformation. But we agreed to run a study of the alumni and report the results back to the I-House trustees.

To uncover what makes I-House special, we spent the past three years interviewing alumni and studying how I-House residents change to determine if I-House indeed transforms residents—and if it might offer a blueprint that we could share with other businesses, organizations, and universities.

A Community that Actually Changes People

We first surveyed 1,600 alumni from I-House, dating back to the 1950s (you can read our full summary of that study here). The alumni scored very high in several prosocial traits, such as emotional intelligence and intellectual humility, empathy, and a sense of global citizenship. When we asked alumni about their prosocial behavior in the past month–using a measure known as the World Giving Index–roughly 80% of I-House alumni had helped a stranger and 60% had donated money. If I-House alumni were its own country, it would rank among the top three most prosocial nations worldwide.

The alumni also showed much lower political polarization compared to the general U.S. population.

As we read through hundreds of survey interviews with alumni, the results were striking. The alumni uniformly raved about the experience, including how it has helped them many decades later in careers ranging from politics to business. They overwhelmingly described their time at I-House as transformative.

One former resident wrote “ In many contexts over the last 20 years I have had to draw on skills learned at the House” and another said “I believe my time at I-House was hugely impactful on my life. I definitely view myself as a global citizen and approach my work that way.”

Others spoke about the specific skills they gain from the experience, noting they gained “Invaluable skills for cultural navigation and communication. Organizational skills for managing events and groups of people. Expanded my heart and mind!”

These testimonials struck us as a remarkable departure from the student experience at many of our leading universities over the past few decades. Perhaps this is why the difference between I-House and Columbia stood out so clearly to the student from Columbia. In an era of echo chambers, I-House stood out as a space that actively fostered dialogue across differences and encouraged discussion of challenging topics.

We reported the positive results to the I-House board of trustee, with the caveat that correlation does not equal causation. Perhaps only the most enthusiastic alumni completed our survey or students from the past had a much rosier view of education than the anxious generation. Or perhaps they simply had a pristine admissions process, effectively weeding out any sociopaths or narcissists.

So I-House invited us back to conduct a longitudinal study with a full cohort of new residents at I-House. We measured their traits and beliefs in the first few days of the academic year (after most of them had moved into I-House) and again at the end of the semester. We warned that the results might not be as impressive.

But low and behold, when we got the results back, they were even more impressive! After just a few months of living at I-House people seemed to become more charitable, trusting of strangers, and emotionally intelligent.

In fact, the results were even more positive than the alumni survey—The current I-House residents outperformed the benchmark samples across every measure of prosociality we measured, even higher than the I-House alumni (as seen in the future below):

As we dug into the data, it became clear that the students who rose the most were those who had the most to gain. Immersing themselves in the I-House community led to an entire suite of positive changes–these residents improved on almost every measure of pro-sociality.

As for the residents who came in already scoring highly on these measures, they could have dropped off since there was nowhere to go but down—in statistical terms, this is known as regression to the mean—but they didn’t. Instead they continued to score highly at the end of the academic year.

The Key Ingredient for Personal Growth

What was the key ingredient that created such a transformative social and intellectual environment?

We found that participation in formal programming that was intentionally designed to cultivate personal and professional growth (like roundtable discussions, a ballroom dance showing different cultural dancing traditions) was linked to improvement on emotional intelligence and global citizenship.

But we also found that simply sharing a meal or talking in the hallway about life, school and politics was also linked to change. We concluded that the main ingredient of I-House’s magic sauce was largely just interacting with people who were fundamentally different in a place where disagreement was not only tolerated, but valued.

It dawned on us that I-House is exceptionally effective in cultivating psychological safety. At I-House, residents feel safe taking “interpersonal risk-taking”, meaning they feel like they can express their true opinions and discuss difficult issues without fearing judgment or exclusion.

This atmosphere creates a sense of belonging and trust which allows residents to explore and share different perspectives and deepen their understanding of one another and the world. For instance, one resident reported that I-House has made them “more confident in expressing [their] views, knowing that people generally mean no harm and that it’s all about understanding [people’s] perspectives”.

Moving Beyond Echo Chambers

In recent years, American colleges have been struggling to maintain a climate of open and respectful discussion of different ideas and beliefs. American college students increasingly feel unsafe to share their opinions and beliefs on campus; two in three report self-censorship during class discussions and educationally valuable conversations on campus.

This creates a kind of echo chamber where everyone retreats into their own silo. It’s not the kind of climate that students want and it’s not conducive to learning new perspectives, engaging in robust debate, or resolving conflicts–skills that are critical when students graduate, enter the workforce, and take on leadership roles in their communities.

More importantly, students are disenchanted with the culture of silence at many universities. The faculty also feel under attack from the government, at odds with university leaders, and sometimes even fear their own students (or at least being reported by their students to the administration or news). These conditions make it very difficult to learn from one another both inside and outside the classroom.

A similar dynamic has occurred in companies who created “affinity groups”— a way for people of an underrepresented background or life experience to find each other and connect. This has the benefit of fostering a sense of belonging, but it cuts off people from cross-group interactions. This eliminates two of the most powerful ways to reduce hostility: intergroup contact and working together towards a common goal.

Instead of worrying about debates between people with different ideas, our leaders and institutions should encourage genuine and constructive disagreements. Even if students or employees ultimately disagree, they can move past the caricatures they see on social media and humanize people with a different perspective. And, more importantly, they might actually learn something.

One of the striking things about I-House is that they have been practicing this for the past century. They embraced diversity and debate before it was in vogue, and stuck with it when it became a political liability. As many major institutions have simply followed the trends, this sincere commitment to these values. Their mission is to create “an open-minded and intellectually challenging community where our residents expand their worldview and form lifelong bonds.”

In an era of heightened polarization and a stretching of our social fabric, I-House is an example of how to build and bind a community as diverse as they come. Smart institutions should pay attention to these lessons if they want to cultivate social and cultural intelligence.

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