Group Think

2026-03-23 - source - Read full transcript

Shankar Vedantam (host)Jay Van Bavel

Key insights

Group identities operate below the level of conscious choice, filtering perception, preference, and behavior rather than simply reflecting them.

Van Bavel argues that people assume their actions are autonomous and intentional, but social science shows that group identity acts as a prism through which people interpret the world. He frames the whole episode around this reversal: identity is not just an output of our choices, it is an input that shapes what we see and want.

group-identity-as-perceptual-lens

Priming a group identity changes literal taste preference, not just stated preference.

In a field study in Ottawa, people primed to think about their Canadian identity rated maple syrup as tastier than honey, while people primed with personal (non-group) identity rated the two equally. The effect held for an actual taste test, not just a survey, suggesting identity shapes perception, not merely self-report.

group-identity-as-perceptual-lens

Group identity changes literal sensory perception, including smell.

In a University of Sussex study, participants smelled the identical sweat-soaked shirt but rated it as far more disgusting when told it belonged to a rival university's student than when told it belonged to a fellow student, showing the effect extends beyond preference into raw sensory judgment.

group-identity-as-perceptual-lens

Randomly assigning people to trivial, meaningless groups is sufficient to produce ingroup favoritism within minutes.

Henri Tajfel's minimal group studies randomly sorted youths into groups based on a coin flip disguised as an art preference (Klee vs. Kandinsky). Participants then gave more money to their own group and, notably, prioritized maximizing the gap between ingroup and outgroup allocations over maximizing ingroup gain outright, even though they never met or expected to meet group members.

ingroup-outgroup-dynamics

Ingroup success triggers a measurable neural reward response even in people who did not personally participate.

In Van Bavel's NYU-vs-Columbia study, when NYU students saw fellow NYU students win money in an economic game, they showed a brain response consistent with personally winning, the neural basis of 'basking in reflected glory' and of fans feeling triumphant when their team wins despite doing nothing themselves.

ingroup-outgroup-dynamics

Threatened groups misjudge physical distance and size in ways that match their sense of threat.

Yankees fans overestimated how close Fenway Park was to New York compared to accurate estimates from non-fans; separately, people who felt threatened by illegal immigration overestimated how close Mexico City was to the border and overestimated the number of people crossing it. Van Bavel frames both as adaptive threat-response distortions applied to group-level perception.

ingroup-outgroup-dynamics

Rising political polarization is driven more by outgroup hatred than ingroup love, which pushes politics toward sectarianism.

Van Bavel says the growing trend links political identity to morality itself, so the outgroup is perceived as evil rather than merely disagreed-with. This shifts behavior: people will support an ingroup leader they personally dislike or distrust simply to keep the 'evil' outgroup from winning, and it is now a measurable driver of voting, volunteering, and donating.

political-polarization

Partisan identity, not risk data, was the dominant predictor of pandemic behavior and vaccine hesitancy.

Van Bavel's lab found the partisan gap in social distancing between Democrats and Republicans widened over time as the pandemic worsened, the opposite of what a purely risk-rational model would predict. He cites that 32% of Republicans did not plan to get vaccinated versus 3% of Democrats, roughly a tenfold gap explained by partisan identification more than by risk exposure.

political-polarization

Content that morally condemns the outgroup is the single strongest predictor of virality on social media.

Across studies covering hundreds of thousands of people, moralized, emotional political language was 15-20% more likely to be shared, but explicitly 'dunking on the outgroup' was 67% more likely to be shared than neutral content, and this sharing occurs almost entirely within, not across, ingroup lines.

political-polarization

Leaders can deliberately convert a symbol of division into a symbol of shared identity to defuse intergroup conflict.

Nelson Mandela used the Springboks rugby team, previously a hated symbol of apartheid to Black South Africans, as a unifying symbol by wearing the team captain's jersey at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. Van Bavel frames this as a psychologically deliberate act of redefining group boundaries rather than merely a gesture of goodwill.

overcoming-tribalism

Adding a shared, superordinate identity broadens who counts as an ingroup, reducing prejudice against a formerly outgroup member.

After Liverpool signed Mohamed Salah, a visibly observant Muslim player, fans began singing pro-Muslim chants, hate crimes in the area dropped 16%, and anti-Muslim tweets from Liverpool fans fell by nearly half compared to fans of other clubs, per research by Salma Mousa. A parallel study by Mousa placed Christian and Muslim players on the same soccer teams in post-ISIS Northern Iraq and found that shared team membership, especially on winning teams, produced measurably greater cross-religious connection.

overcoming-tribalism

A shared superordinate purpose, like a space race or a shared planet, can motivate cooperation across otherwise hostile group boundaries.

Van Bavel points to JFK's moonshot rhetoric during the Cold War and to astronauts' recurring 'overview effect,' the feeling of connectedness to all humanity after seeing Earth from space, as evidence that reframing people's identity around something bigger than nation or party (a common species, a common planet) is a psychologically real lever for building the cooperation needed to address global threats like climate change.

overcoming-tribalism

Books referenced

The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony - Jay Van Bavel and Dominic Packer - Van Bavel's own book with his research collaborator Dominic Packer, the source of most of the studies and frameworks discussed in the episode's second half

Media referenced

Screaming Into the Void - podcast - An earlier Hidden Brain episode Vedantam references that covered how social media exacerbates tribal loyalties and group divisions
I am Canadian (Molson Breweries ad) - other - A famous Canadian beer ad Van Bavel discusses as an example of a company leveraging national group identity to drive sales and win awards
1966 World Cup Final (England vs. West Germany) - other - Van Bavel uses the disputed 'ghost goal' controversy to illustrate how group identity distorts even direct visual perception of the same event

Companies

New York University - Where Jay Van Bavel is a professor of psychology and runs his social identity research lab
Molson Breweries - Canadian brewery whose 'I am Canadian' ad is cited as a case of group identity driving both cultural resonance and sales
Adidas - One of the two shoe companies founded by the feuding Dassler brothers (Adi Dassler), used to illustrate how arbitrary personal conflict can calcify into permanent group identity and discrimination
Puma - The rival company founded by Rudolf Dassler after the brothers' falling out, forming the other half of the 'town of bent necks' story

Techniques and frameworks

Social identity theory / minimal group paradigm - Henri Tajfel's foundational studies showing that randomly assigning people to arbitrary groups (based on trivial preferences like abstract art) is enough to trigger ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination
Basking in reflected glory - The phenomenon where a person's brain responds as if they personally won when a member of their ingroup succeeds, observed in Van Bavel's NYU-vs-Columbia economic decision study
Naive realism applied to group perception - Van Bavel's broader claim that group identity functions as a perceptual lens, distorting judgments of distance, threat, disgust, and even direct visual observation of events like disputed sports calls
Subordinate/superordinate goals to reduce intergroup conflict - The strategy of creating a shared, bigger-than-both-groups purpose (a team, a mission, a common threat) to override existing tribal divisions, illustrated by Mandela's rugby strategy and the Muslim-Christian soccer league in Northern Iraq

Summary

This episode features NYU social psychologist Jay Van Bavel, discussing his book "The Power of Us," co-written with Dominic Packer, on how group identities shape human behavior. Vedantam opens with Nelson Mandela's use of the Springboks rugby team, a hated symbol of apartheid to Black South Africans, as a deliberate psychological tool to unify a divided nation, framing the episode's central claim: we assume our choices are autonomous, but group identity acts as an invisible lens that filters what we perceive and want, often without our awareness.

The first half of the conversation builds the case that group identity is not just a preference but a perceptual filter. Van Bavel's own story of bonding with a stranger over a Canadian flag patch in Venice shows how minority status makes identity salient; a Canadian field study shows priming national identity literally changes how good maple syrup tastes relative to honey; a University of Sussex study shows the same sweat-soaked shirt smells more disgusting when attributed to a rival school. He extends this to outright sports controversy, using the disputed 1966 World Cup "ghost goal" to argue that fans of opposing teams do not just interpret the same footage differently, they may genuinely see different things, an effect Oxford's own video analysis fails to resolve for either side.

Van Bavel then turns to Henri Tajfel's foundational minimal-group experiments, in which purely arbitrary, coin-flip group assignments (ostensibly based on trivial art preferences) were enough to produce measurable ingroup favoritism within minutes, including a documented preference for maximizing the gap between ingroup and outgroup allocations over simple ingroup gain. His own NYU-versus-Columbia study extends this into neuroscience: watching an ingroup member win money produces a brain response resembling personally winning, the mechanism behind sports fans' vicarious triumph. This dynamic escalates into real-world costs: Yankees fans misjudge distances to Fenway Park, people worried about immigration overestimate migrant numbers and border proximity, and rising U.S. polarization is driven more by "outgroup hate" than ingroup love, pushing politics toward treating opponents as morally evil rather than merely wrong. Van Bavel's own research found the partisan gap in COVID-19 distancing behavior widened, not narrowed, as the pandemic worsened, and that content attacking the outgroup is 67% more likely to go viral than neutral content, evidence that social media systematically rewards tribal signaling over accuracy.

The episode closes on interventions. Mandela's rugby jersey and Liverpool's embrace of Mohamed Salah (which measurably reduced local hate crimes and anti-Muslim tweets) both show that redrawing group boundaries around a shared, superordinate identity, team, nation, species, can override existing prejudice. Salma Mousa's soccer league for Christian and Muslim youth in post-ISIS Northern Iraq extends this from celebrity effects to a deliberate, scalable intervention. Van Bavel closes with the "overview effect," astronauts' recurring experience of feeling connected to all of humanity after seeing Earth from space, as a model for the kind of identity shift, from nation or party to shared humanity and planet, he argues is necessary to build the cooperation required to address climate change.

Notable Quotes

"He took a symbol of oppression and used it as a symbol of togetherness." - Jay Van Bavel

"The moment that you're part of a team or part of a group, you will give more money to members of your ingroup and less money to the outgroup, even if you never interact or meet those people." - Jay Van Bavel

"The biggest single predictor of making something go viral is dunking on the outgroup, saying something negative about the other side." - Jay Van Bavel

"If we lose this earth, we don't have anywhere to go." - Jay Van Bavel