Dr. Todd Rose

It's so deep and it's really important.

And again, I want to say, there's nothing wrong with wanting to belong.

You should want to belong.

And you just have to understand when that need to belong tips into being controlled or manipulated or bottom line, just leads you to do things that go against your own judgment.

That's when you start making really bad decisions.

That's right.

By the way, Mel, after I was booked to run the show, I actually dug in and read your book, Let Them.

And I got to tell you, there are so many parallels.

When we get into all the tools later on, we'll be able to dig into a little bit more because there's just so much overlap.

I'm excited to dig in.

Collective illusion is groupthink, but you're wrong about the group.

So let me unpack that just a little bit.

It formally is a phenomenon where most people in a group go along with something they don't privately agree with simply because they incorrectly think that most other people agree with it.

So one of the most sticky collective illusions of all that's been around for multiple decades that we've tracked is this binge drinking in college.

So kids leave home, they go to a new place.

They're like, what does it mean to be a college student here?

Yep.

And they all think that most kids binge drink.

And so they go to a party and they end up binge drinking when in reality, in private, we know as a matter of fact, most college kids are deeply skeptical about binge drinking.

They know it's bad, but it's what they feel like they need to do to belong, to be a college student.