Jay Van Bavel

speaker

271 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

Jay Van Bavel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Hidden Brain · You Are Not Ordinary · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

In this case, they create a sense of meaning and purpose that helps them get past the pain and find a way forward in their lives.

Yeah, the point here is really profound, which is that we think of our family and these people share our DNA.

They're like

as close to us as possible, and yet these other group identities can become more important.

And what's happening in these situations is something that could normally be positive, which is you're part of a religious community that looks out for one another, cares for one another, provides support and meaning.

But in this case, if you're

Getting people to turn against their own family members and have a funeral when they're gone, what that starts to look like is cult psychology.

And we have a chapter of this about cult psychology in our book.

And when people are part of a cultish type of group, and this can happen in religious communities, it can happen at work.

The example of a cult that we studied in organizations was Enron, which was a massive energy company that went bankrupt because they had a cult-like mentality there.

And in those environments, you create social norms that are very unhealthy.

People, when they're part of a group, they want to be good group members and belong.

And so they look to see what the norms are in the community of fellow group members and they follow them.

And so what you're seeing in this example is that the norm is to treat anybody who leaves as dead to them.

In some traditional religious communities, they also engage in what's called shunning.

If you leave the group, your family is not allowed to talk to you anymore, ever again.

And so these are where the norms get very strong and can lead to very negative relationships with people who would otherwise be the closest to you, the ones you'd care about and love and would be there for you as well.

So I think sports are a really good example because I'm a big sports fan.

I've been to lots of football games, hockey games, baseball games.

And you can walk into a stadium with 100,000 other people chanting and covered in the colors of the team.

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