#30: "Us vs. Them" with Jay Van Bavel

02/01/21 • 31 min

Jay Van Bavel studies how our social identities shape the way we see ourselves and the people around us. He’s an associate professor of psychology at New York University. In an upcoming book, he and his colleague, Dominic Packer, present social identity theory. It’s a classic theory in social psychology that has inspired tons of research and continues to give insight into the modern world. At its root, it’s the idea that people often adopt an “us vs. them” mindset, which fuels lots of conflict between groups. In our conversation, Jay shares the basic tenets and controversies surrounding social identity theory and the direction his own research lab is going.
For a quick overview of Social Identity Theory, featuring Dr. Van Bavel, you can check out this YouTube video [13:36] I made.

Things we mention in this episode:

Dominic Packer’s research on identity and dissent.
The pioneering work of John Turner and Henri Tajfel and the development of social identity theory.
Marilynn Brewer’s “Optimal Distinctiveness Theory”
Jay’s research on how social identities affect our thought and behavior in domains like politics (e.g., Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018) and social media (Brady, Crockett, & Van Bavel, 2020).
According to Facebook’s global creative director, Andrew Keller, the average person scrolls through 300 feet of mobile content a day.
Lilliana Mason’s book (Uncivil Agreement) applying social identity to politics.

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/social-identities-with-jay-van-bavel/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Things we mention in this episode:

Dominic Packer’s research on identity and dissent.
The pioneering work of John Turner and Henri Tajfel and the development of social identity theory.
Marilynn Brewer’s “Optimal Distinctiveness Theory”
Jay’s research on how social identities affect our thought and behavior in domains like politics (e.g., Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018) and social media (Brady, Crockett, & Van Bavel, 2020).
According to Facebook’s global creative director, Andrew Keller, the average person scrolls through 300 feet of mobile content a day.
Lilliana Mason’s book (Uncivil Agreement) applying social identity to politics.

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Previous Episode

#29: Hype with Michael F. Schein

Michael F. Schein is a writer, speaker, and founder of the marketing agency, MicroFame Media. In his new book, The Hype Handbook, he explores the antics of historically successful “hype artists”—cult leaders, music promoters, propagandists, etc.—to extract 12 common strategies that get people excited about and committed to new ideas.

In our conversation, we talk about how “hype” is or is not the same as “persuasion,” how much we’re able to learn from stories of historical hype artists, and the ethical and practical limits of hype.
Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/hype-with-michael-f-schein/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Next Episode

#31: The Language of Opinion with Matt Rocklage

Dr. Matt Rocklage studies the words we use to express opinions. He’s an assistant professor of marketing the University of Massachusetts-Boston. In our conversation, Matt talks about the Evaluative Lexicon, which is a tool he developed to quantify the language of opinion. Take an online review, feed it into the Evaluative Lexicon, and it’ll tell you how much the person liked or disliked the product and how much their emotions played a role in their opinion. His research with this tool has shown just how potent emotion can be and how we should approach studying language in psychology.

Things we mention in this episode:

The “Evaluative Lexicon” (Rocklage & Razio, 2015; Rocklage et al. 2018); you can learn more at: http://www.evaluativelexicon.com/
Emotion-based opinions tend to be stronger (Rocklage & Fazio, 2016; 2018; Rocklage & Luttrell, in press)
The role of emotion in consumer reviews (Rocklage & Fazio, 2020)
People turn to emotional language more when trying to be persuasive (Rocklage, Rucker, & Nordgren, 2018)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/language-of-opinion-with-matt-rocklage/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Opinion Science - #30: "Us vs. Them" with Jay Van Bavel

Transcript

Andy Luttrell:

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. When it came to baseball, we were a Cubs family. I remember being in preschool and it was naptime, but the teacher quietly told me not to take a nap and I was like, “What do you mean? I’m four. This is what I do.” But the reason was because my parents were picking me up to take me to a Cubs game. Every summer, my dad would take us to Wrigley Field to see a game. I had this Cubs hat when I was little. It was adorable.