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 · last 12 months

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

And that inspired me actually to study group identity.

And most of the research I started doing on this when I was a PhD student was bringing people into lab and flipping a coin and putting them on two teams.

And what we found over and over and over again is just that simple random flip of a coin that

makes people identify with their own group and discriminate against the other group.

They will give more resources to members of their own group.

They see them as friends.

They automatically trust them more and believe what they say.

And these are the things that happen even if they don't have a chance to interact or even meet anybody in their own group.

Just knowing that they're part of the group is sufficient.

And so this is actually called minimal groups because these effects have been found for 50 years over and over again.

I actually think this is one of the most important findings in all of psychology, that a flip of a coin changes our identities and radically changes how we see ourselves and how we treat other people in really deep, profound ways.

And so this is essentially what Karen's experiencing with her daughter and the soccer teams.

This is a powerful psychological force.

And it's something that it's easy to take for granted until you're in it and you see what it does to you.

But this is something that's important part of human social psychology.

What do you think, Jane?

I mean, that's a really powerful question, Shankar.

So what Miriam's talking about is the fact that you can feel pride when your group does well.

Again, a national group winning a gold medal, your favorite sports team.

But it can also be a source of shame.

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