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

Or in this case, it sounds like she's feeling a lot of cognitive dissonance.

Like she feels really identified with this group and very upset about where it's going.

So when I hear stories like this,

I think that one of the most important things about any group is to create healthy norms.

And in this case, the norm that I think is really important in any healthy group is about dissent.

The research on this done by my co-author, Dominic, when we were in grad school, he wanted to understand why people speak up when they think their group is going wrong.

And what he found was actually really counterintuitive.

Many people have this notion that dissent happens when people don't like the group and want to leave it.

But what actually happens is the opposite.

It is often driven by people who really identify with the group and care about it and worry about where it's going and think that the group is going to be

damage if it continues down this direction.

And so they speak up despite the fact that they know they're going to get pushback or social ostracism or punishment.

Because I always just remind people, think of the terms we have for dissenters, you know, throughout history and how they're treated like heretics.

how are they treated, traders, even devil's advocates.

You go to a company and they'll say, so-and-so is the devil's advocate.

And I say, is there a meaner word you could come up for someone than devil's advocate?

So like pause and think about what you're saying.

And so what any group needs to do, whether this is a national group, part of a community, I often see this in organizations, to avoid that kind of cult mentality is,

is to make sure that you make it safe for people to speak up and dissent.

And part of it is understanding that the people who are doing it are doing it because they want to help the group and they're worried about it and they think it's gone wrong.

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