<![CDATA[The Power of Us: Teaching]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/s/teachinghttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5j42!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F974def97-1e7e-448d-afb2-37a60a17ec47_1280x1280.pngThe Power of Us: Teachinghttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/s/teachingSubstackThu, 07 May 2026 22:23:16 GMT<![CDATA[The POWER OF US Course: A syllabus for teaching about social identity]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-us-course-a-syllabus-b9bhttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-us-course-a-syllabus-b9bWed, 14 May 2025 22:16:59 GMTWe have created a free syllabus and supplementary teaching materials for anyone interested in teaching about “The Power of Shared Identity”. This is a chance for people to learn directly from our book, and go beyond to dig into the original research, new studies, and educational videos and podcasts we created. We curated the most relevant articles for each chapter and added new research published since we wrote the book.

Our free educational content package includes:

  • Syllabus and course schedule

  • Educational videos

  • Suggested readings

  • Chapter summaries & key takeaways

  • Lecture slides (editable .pptx file)

  • Test questions

  • Interactive activities/assignments

  • Interactive class Q&A with either Jay or Dom

  • Newsletters discussing related topics

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

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

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

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

Image

Course Title: The Power of Shared Identity

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

Required Text: “The power of us: harnessing our shared identities to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony” by Jay Van Bavel & Dominic Packer (2021). This can be purchased from our publisher or as an audio or kindle book from Amazon. Translations are also available in the UK, Canada, Brazil, Japan, China, Romania, Korea, Mongolia, and United Arab Emirates.

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

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

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

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

  • Evaluate effective and problematic uses of identity in case studies

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

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

Week 1: The Power of Us

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

Week 2: The Lens of Social Identity

Week 3: Sharing Reality

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

Week 4: Escaping Echo Chambers

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

Week 5: The Value of Identity

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

Week 6: Overcoming Intergroup Bias

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

Week 7: Finding Solidarity

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

Week 8: Fostering Dissent

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

Week 9: Identity Leadership

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

Week 10: The Future of Identity

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

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

Let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback on our course materials! And please let us know if you use the syllabus in your teaching.

Thank you for reading The Power of Us. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

News and Updates

Yesterday Jay gave a full day workshop to 100 leaders in Bergen, Norway on the science of social identity and leadership, drawing from our book. His workshop on Identity Leadership offered five key takeaways that are associated with building a strong sense of identity and effective groups:
🔹 Establish shared goals
🔹 Use collective rewards
🔹 Share stories with collective language
🔹 Create healthy social norms (that include dissent)
🔹 Act as “one of us”

Photo shared by Camilla Brandt

Catch up on the last one…

Last week, we shared some questionable data in our newsletter about the elements of healthy groups. We recieved important notes about the study’s data quality and have revised our newsletter to link to some solid criticism about the cited meta-analysis. Revisit last week’s newsletter below:

]]><![CDATA[Debunking Popular Psychology Myths: Why Conformity Is Rational]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/debunking-the-myth-that-conformityhttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/debunking-the-myth-that-conformityTue, 29 Apr 2025 21:17:15 GMTIn a classic moment of comedy history, the TV show Candid Camera had actors reveal the human tendency for conformity. You can see unsuspecting participants enter an elevator and quickly conform to a new set of rules—like facing the back or turn from side to side—as they observe the actions of others. It reveals, to great comic effect, the absurd degrees to we will mimic complete strangers.

Read more

]]><![CDATA[Debunking Popular Psychology Myths: Exposing The Stanford Prison Experiment]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/debunking-common-psychology-mythshttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/debunking-common-psychology-mythsTue, 01 Oct 2024 13:29:05 GMTIn the summer of 1971, one of the most famous experiments in the history of psychology was conducted in a 35-foot section of the Stanford Psychology Department basement. Each participant had responded to an advertisement in the local newspaper offering $15 per day to male students who wanted to participate with a "psychological study of prison life" that would last for one or two weeks in the basement of Jordan Hall.

After signing up to participate, eighteen healthy young men were randomly assigned to play the role of a prisoner or guard. Efforts were made to create as realistic a situation as possible. Before the prisoners arrived, the guards were provided with wooden batons, uniforms and mirrored sunglasses. This uniform was specifically to de-individuate them, and they were instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping.

The experiment effectively began when real Palo Alto police officers “arrested” the participant prisoners in their homes and charged them with robbery. They were brought to the makeshift prison at Stanford, fingerprinted, searched, and given identification numbers. Thus began one of the most controversial studies in the field—a study that set in motion a myth about human nature that would spread far beyond the confines of psychology community.

During the next five days, the "guards" engaged in the psychological abuse of the prisoners. It became increasingly brutal with every passing day. The guards employed psychological tactics to control and humiliate the prisoners, and several guards began to exhibit genuine sadistic tendencies. The sanitary conditions swiftly declined when the guards forced the prisoners to urinate and defecate in a bucket placed in their cell—and refused to let the prisoners empty it.

The cruelty of the guards eventually led one prisoner to “act crazy,” including screaming, cursing, and begging to be released. When another prisoner went on a hunger strike to protest the abuse, he was locked in a dark closet for “solitary confinement.” The abuse of prisoners continued to escalate until psychologist Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions.

She was shocked to see how study participants were behaving and she confronted Professor Zimbardo, the young professor in charge of the experiment (they were married in 1972). Her role as the key dissident was highlighted in the fictional movie on “The Stanford Prison Experiment”. Zimbardo (played by Billy Crudup in the movie) was eventually convinced to end the experiment on the sixth day—several days before the study was scheduled to end. It had gotten well out of hand.

Within weeks, these shocking findings hit the press and the study quickly became a staple of social science classes around the country. Indeed, we both learned about the experiment 25 years ago in our Introduction to Psychology classes. Zimbardo, became a star witness in congressional testimony on issues ranging from American prison riots to the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

The power of roles was cemented in the public consciousness. This became a canonical finding affirming the power of the situation. Alongside the work on obedience to authorities by Stanley Milgram (which we will analyze in a future newsletter), these conclusions have played a key role in shaping public understanding of the psychology of tyranny and evil for the past half century.

The lesson about the study, distilled, simplified, and retold in countless lectures, textbooks, documentaries, and movies, seemed clear: people slip naturally into social roles. Guards become terrifying psychopaths by virtue of donning a uniform and aviator glasses, and prisoners become compliant when they are stripped of their identities in a prison environment.

In our view, this constitutes one of the biggest myths in the history of the field.

“Act as you picture the pigs reacting”

Nearly a half century after the original experiment, Zimbardo and his team kindly gave scholars full access to the full archives of data from the Stanford Prison Experiment. To the surprise of many people, it contained bombshell new evidence that shed a radical new light on the famous study. Specifically, a series of analyses by Ben Blum, Thibault Le Texier, along with Alex Haslem, Steve Reicher and Jay, led to a new understanding of this classic experiment and stirred up a heated debate in the field.

These scholars were finally able to listen to audio tapes of the prisoners receiving instructions from the experimenters. These materials suggest a shockingly different explanation for the vicious behavior in the original experiment.

As Alex Haslam, Steve Reicher and Jay argued in the American Psychologist, this new evidence made it very clear that merely assigning people to play the role of a prison guards did not lead them to engage in cruelty naturally, of their own accord. Instead, the tapes provide clear evidence that the experimenters in charge of the “prison” used psychological tactics to persuade reluctant guards to adopt an aggressive style in their interactions with the helpless prisoners. 

This shattered the longstanding myth.

In one recording, the prison “Warden”—a member of Zimbardo’s research team—meets with one of the guards who was reluctant to engage in cruelty towards the prisoners. The superintendent says “We noticed this morning that you weren’t really lending a hand … but we want to get you active and involved because the guards have to know every guard is going to be what we call a ‘tough guard’.”

In other words, the guards were not acting brutal enough to make the experiment a success. They did not naturally become nasty prison guards. So the research team ratcheted up the pressure.

After the guard repeatedly resisted the pressure to engage in the harsh treatment of the prisoners, the Warden made it clear what’s expected:

Warden: …for the time being, you know, I, we need you to play the part of, you know, tough Guard and forget some of the more sophisticated psychology that you might know. And, um, and try and react as you picture the pigs reacting.

Guard:  Well I’ve met a lot of police that, er, that act a whole lot of different ways. You can’t do it just by the movies or something. ‘Cause you know I’ve met plenty of police.

Warden:  Well, you know, I’m not... We’re trying to set up the stereotype Guard, not, you know … Alright, and we realize that you’re going to have your own individual style. But, but so far your individual style has been a little bit too soft pedal.  And we want you to get in there, OK?

Guard:  You mean just doing things like in the counts and stuff…

Warden: In the counts and in other things. I mean when there’s a situation like this, um, to have to go in there and shout if necessary. And, and to be more into the action. OK?  Alright.

Drawing on this new evidence, the superintendent in the experimental prison was using a form of "identity leadership.” Specifically, he encouraged the guard to see himself as sharing the same mission as the experimenters—cultivating a shared in-group identity (and us versus them). In fact, the Warden also makes it clear that they are working together with the Guard to reform the prison system. They are in it together in a virtuous mission.

Warden: I’m saying, you know, above and beyond the fact that this is just a psych experiment, the importance of it in terms of, especially for people who are concerned about the correctional system which both Professor Zimbardo and I are. Um, you know, we happen to agree with you that basically it’s rotten and that it doesn’t produce the kind of rehabilitation, quote unquote, that you would want to produce, and, um, and that perhaps, you know, some of the better ways to produce rehabilitation is to remove the things in society…You know, all that stuff. I, I am very deeply committed to that…what we want to do is be able to, to study the thing that exists, or as nearly as we can make it to what exists and to, and to be able to go to the world with what we’ve done and say “Now look, this is what happens when you have Guards who behave this way”.

We analyzed the transcript and noticed that the warden used collective pronouns 57 times during the short conversation (or once every 30 words) to cultivate a sense of shared identity with the guard—centered around toughness towards the prisoners. This is the same language that politicians who win elections are far more likely to use (using them once every 79 words) than losing candidates (using them only once every 136 words). (You can read the full transcript in the supplement of our paper).

The superintendent framed toughness towards prisoners as necessary for the achievement of a shared goal to help revolutionize the prison system. He says “We’re not trying to do this just because we’re sadists,” and then supplies a rationale for harming the prisoners: “If you need an excuse, and I think most of us do really, it is so we can learn what happens in a total institution.… And we want to know about them so that we can get on the media and into press with it and say ‘Now look at what, what this really about.’”

But you do not need to take our word for it. The audio tape we quoted and analyzed can be accessed directly online. For the first time, people can learn what happened behind the scenes of one of the most famous experiments in psychology. Listen to it yourself and draw your own conclusions (and share your thoughts or theories in the comments section).

A more recent paper by Jared Bartels came to a similar conclusion. He analyzed the impact of Zimbardo’s instructions to the guards and found that it had a similar impact. The day before the experiment began, the Stanford research team held an orientation for the guards in which they communicated their expectations about hostility towards the prisoners. How was this perceived?

This new research showed a completely fresh set of participants this same script from 50 years earlier as if they were new guards taking part in the experiment. Upon reading the original orientation script, the “new guards” expected hostile and oppressive behavior and assumed it was expected from themselves.

Thus, the language of the research team clearly sanctioned abuse among the guards at numerous phases of the Stanford Prison Experiment. This came across in how they oriented the guards. And, if individual guards did not comply, they pressured them aggressively behind the scenes. This is hardly a case of guards automatically adopting a new role.

This new evidence suggests that adopting a role or entering a system of brutality is not sufficient to produce cruel behavior. Perhaps the role is necessary, but not sufficient for brutality—it requires identity leadership to tip people over the edge.

These findings converge with recent work showing how identity leadership was central to Milgram’s famous studies on obedience to authority and to the dynamics of tyranny and cruelty outside the lab. Once one appreciates the role of identity leadership in both the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s obedience studies, the underlying lesson comes into focus. This is how leaders throughout history have validated cruelty to minorities or immigrants—by signaling that these are out-group members and that the ends justify the means. The actions and language of leaders matter. (We will review this research in a future newsletter where we continue to debunk the biggest myths in the field of social psychology. Stay tuned!)

There is also a hidden story here about dissent. Christina Maslach was obviously a key voice of dissent that was necessary to stop the study. Another the audio tape reveals that at least one guard was actively dissenting as well. Despite his role as a guard, he was actively resisting the attempts of the experimenter to pressure him into mistreating the prisoners. In fact, we reached out to the guard for his own story when we wrote our paper and he stands by this alternative narrative. He was a peacenik who was refused an unjust authority. As Jay mentioned in an article for Scientific American with Haslam and Reicher:

“Our analysis also highlights striking evidence that some guards were actively resisting engaging in brutality—fighting back against the pressures from leadership. From Oskar Schindler to Rosa Parks, history is brimming with people who have bucked oppressive authority figures and abusive systems. It is not only time for a radical rethink of one of psychology’s most influential experiments, but also for recognition that our most famous studies on cruelty, conformity and obedience have critical lessons to teach us about leadership and resistance.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment remains one of the most famous psychology studies of all time. It is covered in most introductory psychology and social psychology textbooks and courses and is a standard point of reference for media stories on tyranny and repression. The study has also been presented to government officials and in court cases to help understand events ranging from prison riots to the abuse of detainees during the Iraq War. It has provided the material for an extremely influential website (www.prisonexp.org), a best-selling book on evil, and several feature films that have grossed over $12 million at the Box Office.

As a result, the study has had a major role to play in shaping how millions of people think both about the nature of human cruelty and about the power of the situation to encourage toxic behavior. Something awful happened in the basement of the Stanford Psychology department—and there is ample video and audio evidence to back it up. It is therefore crucially important to understand what happened and why people engage in such cruelty. In our view, it’s time to retire the myth from this famous experiment and understand that people often do evil in the service of what they think is the greater good.

We also invite you to read Zimbardo & Haney’s rebuttal to our critique (along with Le Texier’s critique). We have posted a very short summary quote here:

Because the SPE was intended as an exploratory demonstration rather than an experiment in a classical sense, there is no definitive way to choose between role conformity and identity leadership explanations of what occurred in each study. Indeed, both dynamics were likely at play—in the studies themselves and in the institutional environments to which the results can be applied—and we are grateful to Haslam et al. for engaging so thoughtfully with these issues.

We are also grateful to Reicher and Haslam for joining with us in signing a “consensus statement” acknowledging that, although the SPE and the BBC Prison Study are “best viewed as one-trial demonstration studies rather than traditional experiments,” they are each “valid studies and resources” for advancing our understanding of “the abuse of authority and power” (see Haney, Haslam, Reicher, & Zimbardo, 2018). Like them, we continue to believe that the behaviors observed in both studies “were a function of many factors, including the roles, norms, leadership, social identification, group pressure, and individual differences” operating in these and other kinds of complex social contexts (Haney et al., 2018, p. 1).

In contrast, Le Texier’s (2019) article is excessively critical, ignores existing data that contradict what appears to be the author’s selective and unsystematically assembled counternarrative, and is unusually ad hominem in nature. Elsewhere we have provided longer responses to his and other recent criticisms (see http://www.prisonexp.org/links/ #responses). Although space constraints do not allow us to address all of the inaccuracies and misinterpretations contained in Le Texier’s article, we respond to several of his major claims…

And here is a link to our response paper (Steve Reicher, Jay, and Alex Haslam) with our final quote:

It is important to note that this debate is now accessible to all. The gates of the prison are open. Accordingly, all students, teachers, and researchers now have the opportunity to judge for themselves whether the guards in the SPE became cruel spontaneously or whether (and how) their behavior may have been shaped by the urgings of the experimenters-as-leaders. That is the true democracy of science. In a darkening world where, increasingly, authority seeks to define truth and deny reasoned debate, this opportunity is something to cherish.

This is the second column in a series where we debunk popular psychology myths. You can read the first column that debunks the bystander effect myth (both the story of Kitty Genovese and how many people have gotten the wrong impression from the original bystander studies). We will debunk several other popular myths over the next few weeks,

Thanks for reading The Power of Us! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

News and Updates

Podcast: Jay was on the Work Life podcast to discuss How to stop doom scrolling and have a better experience online with host Adam Grant last week. Adam and Jay discuss the science of virality, why bad news often commands our attention, and how we can find common ground around more uplifting content.

Event: Jay will be giving a keynote talk on “The Power of Us” and how it relates to Bypassing Climate Polarization at the Vanderbilt University Law School this week (October 3rd). You can see the conference agenda below and join the conference if you are in the Nashville area.

Catch up on the last one…

Last week, we interviewed Terry Szuplat, one of Barack Obama’s speech writers about his new book, Say it Well! He shares actionable tips and advice on how to write and deliver effective speeches that can inspire any audience.

]]><![CDATA[The POWER OF US Course: A syllabus for teaching about social identity]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-us-course-a-syllabus-8cbhttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-us-course-a-syllabus-8cbTue, 18 Jun 2024 14:30:49 GMTWith the new school year on the horizon, we decided to share a syllabus for anyone interested in teaching about “The Power of Shared Identity” based on our book. This is a chance for people to learn directly from our book, but also go beyond it and dig into the underlying research, fresh studies, and educational materials we created. We suggest readings from some of the most relevant articles for each chapter and added new research published since we wrote the book.

Our free educational content package includes:

  • Syllabus and course schedule

  • Educational videos

  • Suggested readings

  • Chapter summaries & key takeaways

  • Lecture slides (editable .pptx file)

  • Test questions

  • Interactive activities/assignments

  • Interactive class Q&A with either Jay or Dom

We will also offer a free paid subscription to the Power of Us newsletter for any educator who assigns our book in their class.

The course syllabus is ideal for college students, but can easily be adapted for book clubs (e.g., by focusing on on the book and excluding any assignments), organizations (e.g., by making the original research articles optional and including case studies or practical activities), or academic seminars (e.g., by focusing on the original research articles and requiring an original research project). We encourage people to be creative and adapt the content for their audience.

We also visit the classes of educators who use our teaching materials! Last year, we visited several classes at various universities around the world. We also did an interactive Q&A with Dr. Helen Harton’s course Influence: Harnessing Psychology to Create a Better World. We created a newsletter with our Q&A with students from her class.

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

Image

Course Title: The Power of Shared Identity

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

Required Text: “The power of us: harnessing our shared identities to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony” by Jay Van Bavel & Dominic Packer (2021). This can be purchased from our publisher or as an audio or kindle book from Amazon. Translations are also available in the UK, Brazil, Japan, China, Romania, South Korea, Mongolia, and United Arab Emirates.

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

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

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

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

  • Evaluate effective and problematic uses of identity in cases studies

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

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

Week 1: The Power of Us

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

Week 2: The Lens of Social Identity

Week 3: Sharing Reality

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

Week 4: Escaping Echo Chambers

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

Week 5: The Value of Identity

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

Week 6: Overcoming Intergroup Bias

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

Week 7: Finding Solidarity

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

Week 8: Fostering Dissent

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

Week 9: Identity Leadership

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

Week 10: The Future of Identity

Please visit these links if you prefer to view and download the syllabus as a .pdf or a word doc, or editable/downloaded Canva link.

Our book website includes several reviews in case you want to see what other people thought about the book before you assign it. We also have translations in South Korea, Brazil, Japan, China, Mongolia, Romania, UK, and the UAE for students from these countries as well as audio and kindle versions.

Let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback on our course materials! And please let us know if you use the syllabus in your teaching.

Thank you for reading The Power of Us. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

News and Updates

Jay gave two talks last week on THE POWER OF US. One was a Keynote to the Investment Stewardship Academy at Yale University and the other was a workshop at NARMI in New York about the principles of building shared identities & healthy norms. Welcome to anyone in the audience from those talks who is now part of our newsletter community! Here is the stack of free signed books from the Stewardship Academy.

Jay will be speaking at his alma mater the University of Alberta this afternoon in the psychology department. If you are in Edmonton please swing by!

If you want to invite either of us to speak at your event, podcast, or other venue please complete this form.

Catch up on the last one…

Last week, Jay shared his reflections on burnout, the future of work, and his goals to retire from 10% of his work-related activities. (And why it matters for well-being and work life balance!).

]]><![CDATA[Harnessing Psychology to Create a Better World: Questions & Answers]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/harnessing-psychology-to-create-ahttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/harnessing-psychology-to-create-aTue, 30 Apr 2024 12:21:24 GMTThis week we want to share some questions—and our answers—from Dr. Helen Harton’s class called "Influence: Harnessing Psychology to Create a Better World." As part of the course, Helen has students read and discuss books and articles and come up with a plan to use psychological theory/research to try to improve society in some way. The students come up with a few questions to ask the authors of the books they are reading. We are happy to answer questions about “The Power of Us” from any educators who assigns our book to their class (see the bottom of this newsletter for more information about our free teaching resources).

We answered the following thoughtful questions from Mara, Makenzie, Emma, and Emily:

Image created by ChatGPT 4

  1. What do you hope for us, as the readers, to take away from your writing? What do you hope we will use to change the way we act, and how will that impact society as a whole?

When our publisher suggested calling our book “The Power of Us”, we liked it because the…

Read more

]]><![CDATA[Take the WHO AM I? CHALLENGE by completing our identity test]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/take-the-who-am-i-challenge-by-completelyhttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/take-the-who-am-i-challenge-by-completelyTue, 30 May 2023 07:01:00 GMTThe next time you walk into the bookstore, stroll through the SELF HELP section. You might notice that most of the books have a common theme. From Atomic Habits to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, the bestselling self-help books are focused on an atomic version of the self. They frame the self as a hero or heroine, trying to navigate the challenges of the world in order to achieve great things—or at least not to be waylaid by others on our path to success.

Unfortunately, the miscast the self as a loner. Instead of this atomized version of the self, we all contain a number of identities. And these identities are very often shaped by the people and places in our lives. These are social identities. As the poet Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

In our book, we tried to put readers in touch with this more accurate view of the self. To do this, we both completed the sentence "I am ____________" multiple times. We described our results in the very first chapter of our book. Here are Dom and Jay’s top 10 identities:

To help change how society thinks about the self, we have created a free online tool on our website to help people better understand their identities. The WHO AM I? Challenge will encourage you to reflect on your identities and summarize the top 10 that come to mind.

The challenge is an opportunity to not only learn more about ourselves, but to share this with others and, in turn, learn more about them. So please share your results once you do the task. You can challenge your family, friends, or colleagues to do the challenge and discuss your results. Does it change how you think of them or how you think about yourself?

The WHO AM I? CHALLENGE is based on The Twenty Statements Test (TST), a well-known instrument that is widely used to evaluate self-concept. The TST was originally developed in the 1950s by social psychologist Manfred Kuhn as a way of determining the degree to which we base our self-concepts on our membership in different groups.

In the book, we describe identities as either being individual, relational, or collective. You can learn about what these categories mean in our task, and find out which category your responses most align with!

One interesting experiment has shown that perceptions of oneself when taking the 20 statements test can be influenced by exposure to different environments. In one iteration of the Twenty Statements Test administered by psychologist Dacher Keltner and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, responses to the test differed as a function of environment.

One group of research participants completed the test while facing a full-size replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the life sciences building on campus; the other completed it while facing a hallway. The goal of exposure to the T-rex was to induce a feeling of awe, which the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley defines as “The feeling we get in the presence of something vast that challenges our understanding of the world, like looking up at millions of stars in the night sky.”

This is Osborn, the T-Rex skeleton at UC Berkeley


In the study, people who took the test in front of the awe-inducing T-Rex were three times likelier to describe themselves as part of something larger (a collective identity) compared to those who completed the questionnaire facing the hallway. As Keltner describes in his book, Born to Be Good, awe shifts a person's thinking "toward the collective."

Now its your turn to take the CHALLENGE yourself! The challenge is to name ten of your identities, share them on social media, and tag two friends to share their identities. Tell us how many of your most important identities are individual, relational, or collective.

Thank you for reading The Power of Us. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

The online tool for the WHO AM I? Challenge was made possible by our full-stack developer, Danny Nguyen.

News and Events

Our documentary film, The Power of Us: Protecting Democracy in a Time of Extreme Polarization was selected to screen at the 2023 Astoria Film Festival in New York! We will be showing the film along with 8 other short films on June 11th, 12:30pm at the Kaufman Zukor Theatre in Astoria, Queens.

There will be a live Q&A with both Jay and Dom in appearance after the screening. Please join us there to watch the film, ask questions, or just say hi.

Buy your ticket on Film Freeway, and we hope to see you there!

Empty

Jay has been traveling all over Europe since the summer started, and gave a talk about THE POWER OF US at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) this week. He followed this with a workshop on the themes from our book for 100 non-academics (hosted by Agenda Vestland). Please reach out to us if you would like us to to give a talk or workshop on THE POWER OF US at your organization or community.

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). 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…

Our last newsletter was an interview with Brian Lowery on this new book, SELFLESS which is a great compliment to our book. If you liked our book, we recommend SELFLESS!


]]><![CDATA[The Power of Us : A short documentary film]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-us-a-short-documentaryhttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-power-of-us-a-short-documentaryTue, 11 Apr 2023 13:01:50 GMTAs we navigate the U.S.’s political landscape, we’re confronted with the challenges of polarization, division, and the erosion of democratic norms. To explore these issues, we brought together a group of expert researchers, change makers, and organizational leaders to share their insights and perspectives. This short 10-minute documentary film and features interviews from experts including Annie Duke (author, co-founder of Renew Democracy Initiative), Uriel Epshtein (Executive Director of Renew Democracy Initiative), Dr. Hahrie Han (Director of the SNF Agora Institute), Joshua Fryday (Chief Service Officer for the State of California), Alison Taylor (Executive Director of Ethical Systems), and democratic activist Pastor Evan Mawarire (Renew Democracy Initiative).

Watch the documentary on our Youtube channel here, or read a short summary of the ideas presented in the documentary below:

Read more

]]><![CDATA[Why do people cling to false beliefs?]]>https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/why-do-people-cling-to-false-beliefshttps://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/why-do-people-cling-to-false-beliefsTue, 09 Aug 2022 15:39:22 GMTWe are excited to introduce a new four-part video series where we dive into key concepts from The Power of Us. With support from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, we produced videos that combine both animation and interview style formats to illustrate and summarize key concepts from the Power of Us book. This week, we feature content from Chapter 4 and dive into the question:

“Why do people cling to false beliefs?”

Humans go through incredible lengths to preserve their identities. From cults to politics, people often defend their group’s beliefs in the face of clear contradiction.

One of our favorite examples was the Seekers cult, which was active in Chicago in 1954. Dorothy Martin, who seemingly was an ordinary resident, was the cult’s leader who claimed she could communicate with aliens from the planet Clarion. Through her communications with them, she learned that a flood was going to annihilate the U.S. West Coast.

However, a visitor from outer space would visit at midnight on December 21st, 1954 to escort her and other faithful believers to a waiting spacecraft to escape the flood.

Dorothy spread the news, which attracted new believers. Bound together in their stronghold, the Seekers gathered and waited patiently as the clock ticked towards midnight on the night the aliens were supposed to arrive.

But as the clock struck 12:00am, nothing happened.

Someone pointed to another clock that read 11:55pm.

“It must not yet be midnight!”, they thought.

As the Seekers shifted their attention to this new clock, it continued to tick. And no aliens arrived.

The group sat in stunned silence for hours well into the middle of the night. They faced the terrifying prospect that their entire belief system was wrong. This was a moment of considerable cognitive dissonance: should they leave their cherished group or could they find a way to rationalize this failed prophecy?

Then something astonishing happened. At 4:45am Dorothy conveyed a new alien message:

“Actually, our hopes were so strong tonight, that God saved the world for us!”

Rejoicing, the Seekers cheered, believing that they had, through their faith, spared the future of humanity.

In the back of the room, unknown to the Seekers, was Leon Festinger — a social psychologist who was observing the group’s response to this most peculiar evening. Leon Festinger later wrote about the Seekers in the book, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World.

Festinger identified several factors that led people to cling to their false beliefs. Two of the biggest factors were their initial commitment to the idea (true believers) and another was receiving social support from others to continue believing. It might be easy for most of us to let go of a belief when it is contracted by reality, but having a community of people we care about to reassure us that the belief is still true makes it much harder to move on.

The story of the Seekers is an extreme example of group members holding on to false beliefs, but there are also more recent examples in our daily life. For instance, people may fall into online or real world communities with very strong belief systems. This often happens on social media, where we tend to interact with like-minded people who often reinforce our patterns of thinking.

This effect is emphasized by the use of moral-emotional language. In an analysis of tweets by ordinary citizens, Billy Brady and colleagues found that when people used moral emotional language, it was associated with disconnected echo chambers. Specifically, liberals tended to retweet messages from other liberals and conservatives from other conservatives. While messages with moral emotions spread like wildfire within these groups, they rarely seemed to appeal to people across the political divide.

This image shows messages containing moral and emotional language, and their retweet activity, across several political topics (gun control, same-sex marriage, climate change). The two large communities were shaded based on the ideology of each community (blue represents liberals, red represents conservatives). From Brady et al., 2017.

Thus, our research and the story of the Seekers leaves us with three key lessons on escaping echo chambers and understanding why people may cling to false beliefs:

  1. Be aware of how moral-emotional language is used on social media (or elsewhere)

  2. Be aware of our own language on social media (and how it affects others)

  3. Be aware of how groups, from cults to organizations, can act like echo chambers

Click here to watch the first video, “Why do people cling to false beliefs?”, and let us know what you learned or what stood out to you!

Thanks for reading The Power of Us! This post is public, so feel free to share it and visit our social media to start a discussion.

News and Updates

The Power of Us was chosen as the winner of the American Psychological Association’s William James book award! Jay and Dominic will present a symposium about The Power of Us at the 2023 conference in Washington, DC, August 3-5, 2023.

Jay spoke on a panel with Charles Duhigg and Annie Murphy Paul at the Aspen Ideas Festival! The panel was on how we can create more connected communities. You don’t need a ticket to the festival to see it, the video is available on-demand at this link or in the post below.

Catch up on the last one…

And in case you missed our previous newsletter, featuring a story from Jay’s elementary school days AND psychology research, you can read it here.

This week’s newsletter was drafted by Yvonne Phan, the Power of Us’ science communicator.

]]>