REWIND: Jay Van Bavel - Groupthink, Social Identity, and Cult Psychology - Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Or showed us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Trust me, trust me. I'm like a squat person.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
I've never lived.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
To you, I've never a live.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome to trust Me. The podcast about cult, extreme
belief and manipulation from two groupies who've actually experienced it.
I'm lo LeBlanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth. And today our
guest is Jay van Babel. He's Associate Professor of psychology
and Neuroscience at NYU, where he's also the director of

(00:49):
the Social Identity and Morality Lab, and he's the co
author of an excellent book called the Power of Us.
He's going to talk to us about social identity and
how we have many of them that can morph and
change depending on our circumstances. How the group we identify
with can affect not just our decisions, but also our
perception and how groups will inevitably form leaders. So it's
important to implement hierarchy in a healthy way and not

(01:09):
just leave it to the charismatic people.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Indeed, we'll also discuss how emotionally charged situations create shared
identity and how cults systematically replace individual identities with the
group identity, which then makes it even harder to penetrate
their belief system. Plus ways to intervene when someone has
fallen prey to group think, whether groups can be good,
and lots more.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Lots more. I love this conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So yeah, talking for hours before we get in with Jay.
Tell me, please, what your cultiest thing this week is?

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Mind's sad?

Speaker 5 (01:41):
But what I know?

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I guess this happened in May, but I'm just reading
about it now. A scientologist, this beautiful forty year old
woman in Florida recently shot herself and then let herself
on fire because she wanted to drop the body and
go to a new one because disease. So lots of
stuff coming out of the church saying we never say

(02:05):
drop the body or anything like that. But then they're
showing her text messages with somebody talking about how she
wants to do the quote unquote assist of dropping the body.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
And is the person in those texts like affirming that
that's thing.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, she goes, oops, I made a mistake. I asked
for the assist and the girl goes oopsy. She didn't say,
what's those cyst you know, she just said, oh, you
shouldn't do that.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I don't know they mean.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I mean, I guess that the girl she was talking
to is kind of like covering her ass and being like, well, oops,
don't don't talk about that, like it exists, but we
don't do it. But the fact that it exists means somebody.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Likes do it. That is a part of their belief system. Yeah,
but they just don't like to advertise. You know what.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
It's like Mormonism and polygamy. It's like, we don't do
that anymore, the mainstreams.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well yeah, yeah, well they don't do it anymore, but
they it is. It is part of the history for sure, right, yeah, exactly,
or like blood atonement, how blood atonement was a part
of the Mormon history, but they pretend that it exactly
or at least the concept of it.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's super sad, I know, Sorry, guys, I just I'm
wondering if this is going to maybe cause a stir
within the community.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I mean, I didn't hear about that from anyone, but
you so I wonder.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
So not causing a stir exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Also, but I mean I also haven't been looking at
the news that much, so maybe I just missed it.
But I mean I would hope that that would bring
more attention to me too, potentially harmful. Yeah about you, Well,
you know we got to talk about Andrew Tate. God
give it to me, Okay. Well, I mean, I'm sure
everybody pretty knows pretty much knows who this guy is

(03:45):
at this point, but the if you look up toxic
mail and the dictionary, it will be him who, for
some reason, people love on the internet has been arrested
at long last on charges of human trafficking, rape, and
form an organized crime group. It is no secret that
this man is into rape. He has talked about it

(04:06):
in a way that would indicate that a number of times.
There's been video of him beating a woman. He talks
about how women belong in the home. People have accused
him of these things.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
But it's just so crazy because he's.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Been running Hustler University, Which are you a cartoon university?
A cartoon villain? This man is where busloads of American
men and British men have just been trucking in to
go to Hustler's University, where they've literally just been like
forcing women to do porn and or sex x that

(04:40):
they didn't want to do. Like I, how is it real?
How is it real? I'm so glad he's arrested, and
the way he's arrested is the funniest thing ever, because
for anyone who doesn't know you saw his tweet to
Greta Thunberg. Of course, Hello Greta Thunberg on Twitter, I
have thirty three cars. Please provide your email address so
I can send a complete list of my car collection

(05:02):
and the respect of enormous emissions, she says back, Yes,
please do enlighten me. Email me at small Dick Energy
at get alife dot com. He then posts a video
of himself wearing a Versachi robe, smoking his cigar, and
describing her as a bitter slave of the matrix who's
trying to convince you to beg your government to tax
you into poverty to stop the sun from being hot.
He then gestures off camera, asks someone to bring him

(05:25):
pizza and the pizza place. The location of the pizza
place is the thing that gets him arrested because he's
want cartoon so long, literal cartoon. It's so funny, it's
so funny. What he's done is not fucking funny, but
the fact that that is how he went down is
so funny. Like there's just you can't eat the small

(05:46):
dick energy is so strong. The need to look like
a big man is so big that he can't even
stop himself from releasing a video talking about how great
and manly he is that gets him fucking arrested.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Well, something else you were saying early that is very
interesting is that the Taliban is angry that he's arrested.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Wants him to be free.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
They're like, I mean, and I was just saying, I
think that's how you know you're on the wrong track,
is if the Taliban is like, you're cool, this is good?

Speaker 2 (06:15):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's not great.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
In this episode, I call myself cool. I'd like to
just say I don't think that I am.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
So thank you for that clarification when you say it,
when you said, wow, she's just gonna commit.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
She's I was going to say cold, and I said cool,
I did.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
You guys will know what we're talking about in a
few minutes. That is amazing. Yeah, yeah, okay, like damn
the confidence on Meggant.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
I'm cool, you'll see.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Okay, all right, let's talk to Jay and you can
all hear exactly what we're talking about. Welcome Jay van
Babel to trust me.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, thank you for being with us. So you are
so cool. You've done so much research on group identity,
social identity. Okay. So you're the Associate professor of Psychology
and Neural Science at NYU, the director of this Social
Identity and Morality Lab, which is where also any that
makes sense, and co author of the Power of Us,
which I started reading and it is very very good.

Speaker 5 (07:34):
Can you tell us, first of all, what led.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
You to this field and what made you interested in
these topics.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, I mean I got fascinated with group psychology ever
since I've been young. I cite a lot of sports,
and so I love the dynamics of sports teams and
when people get really identified and they can work together
and they can either be like curly cohesive or fall apart.
And then I started also getting interested in things like discrimination,
why do some groups discriminate against others?

Speaker 3 (07:59):
And what is the psychology you of that?

Speaker 4 (08:00):
And then more recently I've been interested in you know,
those those factors of identity and groupishness in all kinds
of other spaces. So how that plays out on social media,
how that plays out in politics, how that plays out
in cults. And so I'm really interested in kind of
these group dynamics and all these different parts of our lives.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Me too.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Groups are so stressful, just the word group.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Okay, So first of all, what is social identity?

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, so identity. Most people understand what identity is, right,
It's who I am, it's her sense of self. Social
identity means part of our sense of self comes from
the groups that we belong to. And so here's a
little exercise you can put yourself. So I'll put you
both through it. Right now, answer the question I am
blank five times? So so each shake, turn and say
what are the first kind of five parts of our
identity that come to mind?

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Oh god, I am creative?

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Oh my god, it is so early for me to
say good things about myself. Okay, I am funny.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
I am anxious, I am cool. I am a filmmaker,
I am an artist, I am curious.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I am not a morning person.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
I am a writer.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
I am hungry.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
So some of those things that you mentioned are like states,
like I'm hungry right now. Some of them are traits
like I am curious, and those are often stable traits.
But a couple of things you mentioned are actually social identities.
So when you mentioned I'm a filmmaker, it means that
you identify with other people who are making films. You
might talk to them, you might go to their websites,

(09:42):
you might be inspired by what they've done. You might
do like group meet ups or drinks or conferences or writer.
So I became an author once I published my book,
which I was a new identity, and then all of
a sudden you kind of get into this whole new
world of other people who written books, other authors, and
they treat you different. And so that's what social identities are.
It's some part of ourself that is defined in part

(10:04):
by the groups we belong to. And when you identify
with a group, it comes with a certain set of norms.
So for me, let's say one of my identities is
I'm a scientist, it means that like I have to
care a lot about the truth. I have to like
go through care about things like peer review, I have
to do like experiments, and I have to have other
scientists who.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Judge and criticize me all the time. That's part of it.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
When I go home, I'm a dad, I have young kids,
and like I completely forget about my job, and they're
like want me to help them with their homework or
make dinner or play board game with them, And so
all of a sudden, I have a different set of
norms and expectations of what it is to be a
dad that come to mind. And so in a given day,
you have all these different identities inside you, and you
kind of move from one situation to the other and

(10:46):
different identities spring to mind. So if you're like a filmmaker,
it's maybe when you're like thinking and working on your
film that you're thinking through that lens. What will other
filmmakers think? What would a great filmmaker do here? What
was I trained, you know, in filmmaking school to do?
Whereas like you know, you go to another part of
your life. I also see you're wearing like a Calves sweatshirt.
I don't know if you're like an alumni.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
No, I actually thought that when I wore this today,
I was like, what am I doing? This is such
a weird day to do this.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
But is it just awashirt?

Speaker 4 (11:14):
So if I saw like a sweatshirt like that on campus,
I think, oh, that's a student who's visiting from cal
maybe did their degree at Callen's now a professor or
a graduate student at n YU. Because that's another way
we signal our identities, what university when we went to
or college, or what sports team we cheer for. A
lot of people like are identified with sports teams at colleges,

(11:34):
and so once you kind of put on once you
identified the group, and that that identity is triggered. It's
like putting on a pair of sunglasses where everything looks
a little different and you're kind of seeing the world
through a different lens.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
So we can have multiple identities and it just really
depends on where we are and who we're with.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
And yeah, and that's one of the things like when
you when you if you ever go to a date,
part of that's what you're doing when you're like asking
these questions and trying to get to know the person,
trying to figure out like do we share identities, do
we share groups that we care about? Or obviously you
just can now online do it on like your dating profile,
and people put the strangest identities on there.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
They might put like filmmaker or like horror film.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
Enthusiast, but they also put things like like their their
personality profile and the Meyers Briggs test, yeah, or what
what you.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Know they did that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:23):
What is your enniogram the like one through or twelve?

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
So so the turns out those are pretty much just pseudoscience.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah a psychologist, and I would like I I company
to spend billions of dollars giving these people.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
But they're basically basically junk k sites. But the reason
people love them is because.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
It puts you in a box and it gives you
an identity, and then it's like, oh, you know, you
know Amelia Earhart and Einstein were also whatever you know,
and enter whatever that I am.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
And so that's the type of thing. People actually want
to be put in a box.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
They'll say they want to be individuals, but they also
want to have these group identities.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah yeah, I mean random example, But like I said,
I'm anxious to me, that actually like sort of because
I have, well, I have been diagnosed with OCD and
struggle with anxiety. But I actually don't think it's it's
like not that useful as a label other than it
helps me go online and find other people who have

(13:21):
OCD and get to talk about this thing that I
have and now I have like a framework for it
to understand what I'm experiencing as opposed to just like
I'm someone who gets anxious a lot.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Is that Yeah, I would say that's like one of
the cool things that the Internet gave us, right, is
that you can kind of find your tribe no matter
where you are, what you're into, you can find people
like you, and you can share tips, you can provide
social support, you can get together. So this is like
triggers like gatherings and social events and so this is
like the cool thing is that. And people now on

(13:53):
their social media often will send out little bad signals.
So if you look at like their profile, they whole
bunch of their social identities like in their profile on
Twitter or Facebook or Instagram of course, and what they're
doing is signaling to look at me. If you check
my profile. If you're like me, follow me, and we're
a part of the drive.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
What's happening in groups becoming more small and more specific
and us find new people who like exactly the same
niche thing as us.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Is that a good thing?

Speaker 3 (14:20):
I don't know if it's good.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
But here's a two big things that groups do for us,
and the groups that fulfill both of these little needs
are super attractive to people, super sticky. So one is
it gives us a sense of belonging. So humans have
this deep rooted sense of belonging, you know. And I'll
just put it in an evolutionary sense. We evolved in
small groups in the savannah, and humans aren't fast or
strong or poisonous. We can't fly away, and so we

(14:44):
would have got picked off pretty quickly if we were
kicked out of our group. That's why people are terrified
of getting like socially shamed or ostracized. Because our ancestors
who got shamed died and they didn't pass on their genes.
So we're the we're the ancestors of like one hundred
generations of humans who fit in and found a sense
of belonging. But we don't want to fit in too much.
We want to fit into groups that make us feel

(15:05):
distinct and special.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
And so this is one of the reasons.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Why like people love like little specialty groups, because you
get to feel like you're distinct from society and yet
a sense of belonging. And this is like I would say,
this is like the ethos of like punks or goths.
And I'll see them like on the subway and you
can ask them, like, why do you all dress alike?

Speaker 3 (15:25):
And they'll say, what are you talking about. We're nonconformists.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
But from the outside they all look like they hit
their conformists, right, But them they're conforming to an an
anti kind of counterculture, right, So they see themselves as
actually super distinctive from society and they have this tight
sense of belonging and cohesion, and so those are really
powerful identities for people. It's why clubs, like dance clubs

(15:48):
and nightclubs have like a big velvet rope and you
have to wait along line to get in. There's a
bouncer and they're like picking the people who are like
good good to have in the club. And I've been
to clubs where like you eight in nine half an
hour you get in, there's like all people inside, and
it's all to creat this illusion that it's like this exclusive,
distinctive club.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Right, So, can you guys some examples of how we've
seen it play out in studies that we prefer our
group to other groups.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, so the most I think this is one of
the most important studies in fifty years in social psychology.
They basically flipped a coin and put a bunch of
teenagers in two groups.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
And you didn't even get to meet anybody in your group.

Speaker 4 (16:27):
You didn't get to meet anybody in the other group,
but you just simply knew that you shared an identity
with them.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
And then you.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Give people some money, and they got to figure out
how much money they wanted to give to an in
group member and an outgroup member. And even though they
didn't know people in other group, there was no stereotypes
about the group, there's no history of conflict. People started
giving more money to their in group than the outgroup
like instantly. And I've run this variance of this study
in multiple countries. I run this in my classroom. I'll
just the split the class into two sides, and by

(16:54):
the end of the class they say they identify more
with their group, and they like their group more even
if they've never even interacted with them, even if they're
total strangers.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
And so that's the power of groups is just simply
flip a coin.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Putting us on a group is like a switch going
off in our brain that signals that's my team, that's
my tribe.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
It's interesting. I went to a escape room on the
end and one of my friends and it did like
didn't care, just didn't care. There was two different teams.
They split us in two, and so I'd be like
unlocking the safe and I'd have the numbers in my
head and You'd be like seventy two man forty, like
just saying other numbers.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
And I was like pissot.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
I got so angry, and I was like the other
group is beating us and like screaming mad, you know,
and I was just like, how is he He's like enlightened,
he turned off the switch in his brain that gives
a shit about winning and like getting this group to win.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
It was so weird.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I mean, he was also probably on mushrooms, but you know,
it was strange. It happened so quickly. They just divided
us and now I'm like, my whole, my whole sense
of self depends on how we do. We did horribly, but.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, yeah. The thing that I find scary is not
that we prefer our group, but that we will try
to disadvantage the other group in favor of.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Our Oh, I would have sabotaged the other group hard.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
And it's based on nothing, as you're saying, Like it
could be totally arbitrary if it's we just happen to
both like that sign over there, Like suddenly we're gonna
make sure that the group who likes the other sign
over there is getting less money than us, Like why why? Yeah,
here's the thing.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
It makes us feel a sense of status and distinctiveness. Right,
if we're better than other group, that's what makes us special.
And so this is why people are obsessed with being
part of like successful groups or high status groups.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Is it makes us feel good. This is why. So
I think of it. In sports, you.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Have all these people who are like watching at home
in their living room by themselves, and they're cheering, or
you can see grown men crying in their living room because.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
They're team lost. They had nothing to do with it,
they weren't on the field.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
They didn't go to practices, they've done nothing to contribute
to the team's success or failure, and yet they feel
it as if it's like as something deeply personal and.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Important to them.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, cana test sports fan boyfriend, cana test. Something else
that you've talked about that I think is really really
interesting is this idea that we don't just like make
different decisions based on our group, we also perceive things

(19:35):
differently based on our group. We literally taken the same
exact information completely differently depending on what cooper And can
you just give us an example of that.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, I mean there's lots of great examples of this.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
One of the famous ones that we talked about, well,
I'll use example of sports again is if you have
sports fans. There's a famous college football game and the
sports the fans from the two different teams saw the
game completely differently, had different memories of which teams committed
more fouls. And then they ran a study where they showed,
you know, students from each university that these teams were from.
It was actually from Dartmouth and Princeton, and the professors

(20:08):
just showed them, you know, a video reel of the
game and they still had different perceptions of what happened,
and so it's it's something that it's very hard to hear.
And this is why everybody hates refs and umps. It's why,
like on social media platforms, people hate the moderators. They
always think that their group is being unfairly moderated. And

(20:29):
it's because it's the big reason in the big explanations,
because they're biased. It's also why people think the media
is biased. I was I was scrolling that someone posted this.
I started scrolling through it. It's like the New York Times,
which I read. You know, you can go online on
Twitter and there will be a ton of people calling
the New York Times fascist and a bunch of now
the whole others.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
That calling them like communist.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
And so is it is it far right or is
it far left or is it really more kind of
like center center left, and people from extreme beliefs really
see it through the lens as an enemy because it's
not producing exactly what they want or occasionally produces something
that they don't like. And so that's kind of like
our identities and how it affects how we interpret.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Kind of all kinds of things, relationships.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
By the way, One of the biggest predictors of who
you like in a relationship is do they share your politics?
And so even things like attractiveness attractiveness to somebody are
heavily determined by our identities.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Interesting, So are we less likely to say our real
opinion if we are in a group that we identify with.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
Yeah, so it really depends. This is what It really
depends on the norms of the group. So I would
say there's two big elements to how group identity works.
One is do you care about the group an you
identify with them? And then the second is what are
the norms of the group. And so some groups have
wide open, wide ranging debates, and when they do this,
those groups actually outperform pretty much every other group. And

(21:58):
if you look in companies, one of my favorite study
was in Google teams. In the company that had kind
of what's called psychological safety, people felt comfortable challenging one
another kind of with crazy ideas, saying something that went
against the status quo. Those teams were more successful, and
the ones that didn't allow that were actually the least successful.
So those are the ones that have groupthink in them,

(22:18):
where everybody's walking on eggshells. Or they feel uncomfortable speaking
their mind, and so you can get that really bad.
And throughout history there's lots of examples of where organizations
and leaders create a group think. You see it on
all kinds of groups, and so that's something that is
kind of within the power of the group to create.
They can create a situation that leads to groupthink, or

(22:39):
they can create a situation that actually makes the group smarter.
And I run studies in my lab where groups are
smarter than a group of individuals as long as they
feel like they're on the same page and they're supporting
one another. But groups can also become way dumber than
individuals if they have bad.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Culture, bad norms. Right, But that depends on where you
start to get into cults. By the way, the ex
version of that is culled psychology.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
I was just going to say, you need a leader, though,
correct for this to work.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
So leadership is actually oddly anti group think. Good leadership good.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, so you've touched on something that most people get wrong.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
Most people think that leadership strong leaders lead to groupthink.
In reality, strong leaders are critical for stopping groupthink because
they don't get threatened when they're challenged, they invite other
people to take turns talking. So I'll just give you
an example of how I run my own research lab.
We have lab meetings once a week. I actually don't
share my opinion first when we have lab meetings to

(23:38):
discuss papers and projects. And the reason for that is
because I'm in a position of power. If I have
a strong opinion, people will just agree with me or
bite their tongue, and so I have to be aware
of that and kind of like be a little bit
quiet until I hear what everybody thinks and that I
can weigh in, and that way I kind of surface
all the interesting ideas that people have. But you can
be a strong leader and feel like you have to

(23:58):
dominate the conversation allays and we will just kind of
go along, or you get really anybody's been on a
team where they have a leader who gets really snappy
when they're challenged or insecure, or lashes out or needs
to take all the credit, And that's kind of the
recipe that leads to groupthink.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
And if there's a group that ostensibly doesn't have a leader,
does a leader just naturally emerge anyway?

Speaker 3 (24:20):
Yeah, leaders usually emerge. Will I will say this is
this very trendy thing to have.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
Like slat groups with no leaders, and the research is
coming out more and more that that's not very effective.
It's not effective in sports teams, it's not effective in
most organizations. People like to know who to look to,
who to trust, who sets the norms and is going
to be a role model. What you often have is
if there's no leader, you can say, well, we're not

(24:44):
going to have a leader. People will organically emerge to
be leader. And the unfortunate thing is sometimes they're good
and sometimes they're bad. So it's better to be smart
about thinking about who is good to promote into a
position of leadership that actually cares about the group, that
kind of embodies its values, that you know that has
the skills to be an effective leader, and think about
how you bring that person up and train them and

(25:06):
support them, rather than just say, oh, we're not going
to ignore leaders. Well, leaders are going to form in
that situation, in that vacuum, and they might not be
the person.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
You want, right Yeah, I mean I I this is
one of the mistakes that I made in a group
situation where I.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
Was like, oh, well we'll all it's it's.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Democracy, we'll all you know. And inevitably that led to
conflict because hierarchies form and then people resent the hierarchies.
And it's almost like you do need to implement one,
implement a hierarchy from the beginning, but just do it
mindfully so.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
That yeah, find the person with the most charisma and
say no, not you.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
They'll the traits that lead to bad leaders.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Okay, charisma can be good, but not when it comes
with these things. So here's the three. It's called the
dark triad. I love this name.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
It's people who score high on maccuum Valianism, so super manipulative,
people who score high on narcissism, so they think they're
better than everybody else. And the worst part of it
is people who score high on psychopathy, so people who
have no empathy. And if you have those three traits,
you have the kind of ingredients for a terrible leader.
And I'll tell you two bad things that happen. One is,

(26:17):
there's this great book called Snakes and Suits and they
it's an analysis of these type of people, especially psychopaths,
and in companies. As you go up in a company,
there tends to be more more psychopaths at the top,
and they rise because they take credit for everybody else's work.
They have sharp malmos, so they hoard resources and so
and then they're the worst people to work on it, right,

(26:39):
so be absolute brutal to their staff. But they rise
up to positions of power because we have a systems
that reward them. Another place, the other place I've seen
this a study I just saw a couple weeks ago,
is with senators.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
So let's go to us. Senators the ones who.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
People who are most likely to get re elected at
like they're on the dark triad. They're the people who
are more likely to have traits that look like narcissism, maciuvelianism,
and psychopathy.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Here's the problem. They're more likely to get re elected,
but they're less likely to actually past bills. They're still
focused on themselves.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
They can't cooperate and get stuff done, and so we
have Also what's happening in organizations where we're having psychopaths
rise to the top, is happening in politics that we're
promoting and re electing leaders who have these terrible sets
of traits and not electing the ones who actually get
stuff done for the betterment of society.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Right, someone who's narcissistic doesn't care about figuring out the
best solution for the group. They just care about looking
like they did. Yeah, and why is it that they
get re elected? I mean, why are we drawn to
those types of personalities?

Speaker 4 (27:43):
I mean, think about the incentive structure of the media
and social media to get attention, to get money. It's
putting yourself out there, making sure that you're the dominant voice.
It's also taking credit for things you didn't do. That's
a psychopathy pieces for being really manipulative and using people
like means to an end. That's the Macie rebellion and piece.
So those are actually, it turns out to me, pretty

(28:05):
useful traits for getting power, unfortunately, and we reward them.
I mean, think of here's another thing is people who
are often most hostile in social media, even not politicians,
often score really high on status seeking and narcissism. And
so everyone's posting non stop, being super aggressive, manipulating people,
trying to make themselves look good, even if behind the
scenes they're actually a nasty person. And so that's a

(28:29):
really useful trait for getting status and attention and credit
in the technology we've created.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Right, I think I heard you say somewhere that like
sixty seven percent more shares come if you say something
about the other side, not your group. So yeah, it
makes sense that we would be rewarding people who are willing.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
To do that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, you're willing to dunk on other people.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
You know, it gets more attention, it gets more followers,
it gets more shares, it gets more clout.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
But on the other hand, it's usually coming out the
host of somebody.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Right, Okay, so talk to us about how difficult or
emotionally charged situations can kind of forge a shared identity.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
So this is sometimes a good thing, right, when there's
a crisis, people can come together. So the one of
the amazing papers we found we talked about the story
in our book, was there was a plane that was
hijacked in the seventies by these essentially these terrorists. And
you know, when you go on a plane, I've been
on lots of plane rides. You know, I put on
my headphones, I watch a movie or I read a book.

(29:40):
I don't really talk to anybody. I don't even really
want to talk to anybody. And that's how most of
us like treat a plane trip. Right.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
But when you're hijacked.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
People all of a sudden developed the shared identity as passengers,
and they shared resources, shared food, they ration things, they
supported one another. And so in a crisis, people come
together and all of a sudden they created a new
identity of passengers or hostages. And so this is what
happens in the world all the time. Circumstances happen, and
they trigger a sense of us, a sense of community

(30:09):
that pulls together, often against an enemy if there's one
that's like harming you, And so that can be a
good thing that creates solidarity and bonding. And that's kind
of I think the main function of identity, right, go
back to this evolutionary brain that we have, this really
old brain. It was creative because humans our main capacity
that is better than any other primate and almost any

(30:32):
other mammal or species on earth, is our capacity for cooperation.
We form groups that we cooperate unlike anything else. That's
why we can like go to outer space, that's why
we're all over the globe.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
It's because we can.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Cooperate insane, but of course it can have downside, right,
you can cooperate to you know, engage in genocide or
something really awful too. So cooperation can have a dark
side if it's used for evil purposes.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Right, In a cultic situation, frequently the cult leader will
kind of generate like a heightened experience or it's often
called mystical manipulation. Would this be kind of fall under
that category of something that could increase group identity?

Speaker 4 (31:11):
Yeah, I mean that's part of what cultleaders are doing,
is creating a sense of identity. Often what they're doing
is against the rest of society. So one of the
cults we talked about in our book was the Seekers,
and they said that they had a prophecy. The woman
who led it had a prophecy that there was gonna
be this massive flood that was going to kill everybody.
And so this was like the crisis that led people

(31:32):
to join the cult and stick with it is because
they thought, well, we're part of something special, and there's
going to be aliens that are going to come down
and like save us for true believers. But it was
in response to this potential looming crisis.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Right. I feel like every element of a cult, it
like the defining characteristics of it, are all ones that
would increase like outgroup animosity and make you know, make
us hostile to groups that are not our group, because
everything about it is like it's stripping your identity, it's
changing your name, it's creating this like heightened emotional experience,

(32:06):
and like you said, there's often a doomsday which you
all would unite around.

Speaker 5 (32:09):
That is that like.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Those things making that shared identity stronger and stronger and
stronger and stronger. Is that part of why it's so
hard to get people out of cults because their identities
are so baked at that point.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Yeah, So imagine for a cult member, and magine if
we gave them the I am blank task, they're going
to say, I am you know, a seeker or whatever
their cult is. But what the cult's done, and what
exactly what you describe the leaders done, is stripped away
all those other parts of their identity.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
So instead of containing five or ten.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
Or twenty different identities like a normal person, they've lost
all those kind of personal traits that they cared about.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
They've lost all those other identities.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
They're no longer able to engage in the things often
that they that they love that are part of who
they are. And another thing that happens is like if
they have let's say family or friends outside the cults
who are like saying, listen, this doesn't sound right. You
shouldn't be giving all your mind to this group. The
cult often labels them like suppressives or some other term,
and tries to cut you off actively from your family

(33:08):
and friends that used to have They try to also
make you quit your job sometimes so you can dedicate
all your attention to the cult. And so what they've
done is systematically it's like chopping off your limbs. But
what they've chopped off is all your other sources of identity.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Hmmm, that's a good way to put it. For something
like QAnon. You know, obviously it's all online, but it's
just like the idea that something big and important is happening,
and I imagine that also would contribute to increasing that
shared identity.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Yeah, and the special thing that's going to happen too,
is not just the crisis. In the case of QAnon,
it was like starting with like the sex trafficking and
the pizza gate. But it's also the special knowledge that
you're part of a group that knows the truth, and
so you are on the inside. And so remember what
I said, the two ingredients were to like really sticky groups. Right,
it's belongingness, which you have if you're accult They often

(33:59):
are very warm and supportive of you and make you
feel special in a sense of belonging, especially when you
first join. And the other thing that offer is distinctiveness,
is that we have special knowledge, we have a special purpose, and.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
We're doing something that's more important than the rest of society.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
And so that's again it's scratching those two inches that
people have for belongingness and distinctiveness, and that makes cults
really sticky for people.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
It seems like the second one is almost more important,
Like your identity of not being the out group is
more important than your identity of being the in group.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah, and they'll often frame the out group as either
just roobs, like naive or stupid.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Or or sometimes sinister.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
Is that like the rest of the world is up
to has this sinister plot or agenda. They're being controlled
by people who are manipulating you. So that that's very
much like the QAnon vibe. And so we're going to
let you in on a special insider info about how
it's all corrupt, and you can be part of this
group that's going to be kind of like anti corrupt
and so all we think of cult so I think

(35:00):
of cultu as and outsider is like pretty nefarious, manipulative,
often abusive, physically and sexually abusive and economically abusive groups.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
But from the inside, what.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
They're communicating to is that they're morally special, that they're virtuous,
and that they're against the things that are bad or
evil that are happening in the world.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, and when when that much animosity happens within the group,
it can it would make it that much hurder. I imagine
to then not only lose your belongingness and your distinctiveness,
but also join this the like the bad ones, the
bad people. If you if you leave the group, you're
losing all of these things. I mean, it makes so
much sense that cult experts frequently talk about how you

(35:39):
can't directly attack the beliefs of the person in the
group because they have so much identity tied to it,
and you have to kind of sneakily get in other
ways if you want to get through to someone.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yeah, I mean I think of this a little bit
sometimes if you're talking to somebody who's really hardcore in
to politics, like an extremist. It's like you can they
can tell you something that they read and you can
debunk it. You can say, well, here's an article that
disproves it, and then they just move to the next
belief that they have. It's like, well, your group does this,
and they don't even like. Changing their beliefs often doesn't
move them. And there's research on this that if you

(36:12):
fact check people's political beliefs that are wrong, doesn't change
who they're going to vote for. And the reason is
the beliefs are often stemming from the identity rather than
the other way around. Identity is not emerging from these beliefs, right,
And so that's the thing about really strong committed identities
is just like trying to debunk them, which is kind
of like the rational person's approach, right, like, oh, you
have these false premises, I'll just like show you evidence

(36:34):
as are true. This is often what like family members
will do if they have a friend and a cult. Oh,
they're lying to you about this or X or did
you see this EXPOSI found online? But often that's not
enough to break them from it, because they'll find a
way to rationalize or justify their beliefs.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
In some other way, right, it's an emotional psychological need
that's being met. It's not an informational need. We don't need,
like facts aren't doing anything for any of us. It's
like that, it's the feelings that the group gives us
or the sense of purpose, you know.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yeah, And that's why the reasons these groups prey on
people who are really lonely or don't have a sense
of purpose or distinctiveness, because they know that once we
feel that need, it's going to be you know, that
person's going to be really committed to the group and
have a hard time leaving. And so I think that
that's one thing you have to understand. It's kind of
like trying to tell somebody they're not hungry. It's like, well,

(37:23):
you just ate, didn't you? And if they're hungry, they're
just going to be like, I don't care what you
told people what I just ate? I want more because
I have a rumbling in my stomach. And so like
the arguing with them is not going to really convince
them that they're not hungry. And so it's kind of
you have to think about it through that need level,
that that their basic needs are being met by this group.
In some pretty deep ways, and so that is something

(37:45):
that you're going to have to find a way to replace.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Wow, that is such a good analogy. I'm going to
steal it from you.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
You feel like you don't have to give me credit.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
I looked you up on rate my professor, and you
have a four point nine out of five and ninety
six percent. Would take your classes again, and I totally
understand why.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Now, Yeah, I know you're really good at so you're
really good at explaining things.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
No, but I feel like you're enjoined my class any time.
If you want to talk about cults, I have a
huge class of three hundred and sixty people and I
bring in guests. So yeah, every you're interested cult psychology.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
I'll bring you in.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
I love that. I would love to do that. Yeah,
Just going back to the emotionally charged or difficult situations,
why do you think to go out to a more
societal level. Why do you think that nine to eleven
seem to bring us together as a country and wars
in the past brought Americans together, and COVID just outor

(38:42):
us apart, it did not have that same effect.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
That's actually a really fantastic question and a hard one.

Speaker 4 (38:47):
To wrap your mind around. So one, it's just a
reminder and I'll give you some evidence on this. And
after nine to eleven, support for George Bush, who was
a president of the United States, was around like forty
five before nine to eleven, and within a week it
had gone up to ninety percent. I think that's the
highest approval rating ever in history for an American president.
And then eventually it eroded and by time he left

(39:08):
office it was like thirty three percent of was the
lowest for the lowest ever. But there was a moment
where there's huge sense of consensus. So why it was
a specifically attack on America and American values and American symbols, right,
So I attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
and they were going after was it the White.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
House or the Capitol?

Speaker 4 (39:26):
And so it was a specific attack on America, and
it was by an outside thread was by terrorist group
of outsiders from other countries. And so this is almost
the exact ingredients you need to create a sense of
shared threat and shared identity. And so all of a sudden,
things like Republican and Democrat identity didn't matter, or you know,
if you're in like New York State or California or

(39:48):
Ohio or Idaho.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
That didn't matter. It was a sense of America.

Speaker 4 (39:53):
And by the way, people in you know, the other
parts of the country out than New York were very
anxious and threatened. Even if they were like in rural Nebraska.
They felt like that they could be the targets of
a terrorist threat. And so you might say, well, that's irrational,
that's kind of what you know, a person would have
said to them, but it didn't matter. That's what they felt.
They felt that their identity was under attack and seriously threatened.

(40:17):
And so that was the ingredients of.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Nine to eleven.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
And obviously we now know nine to eleven led to
all these terrible policy decisions and death and disaster in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and and hate crimes went up against
you know, Muslims in the United States. I had all these,
you know, just because you rally together, if there's a
targeted outsider who looks like this person, it can lead
to kind of collateral damage of harassment and hate crimes

(40:42):
against those people in America, even if they don't support
terrorism at all, even if they're born in America, right,
they're true Americans.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
In every sense.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
Okay, so that that is what the psychology there was
now the psychology of the pandemic. It could have been
like that, but it mattered a lot how it's hand
by leaders.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
And so what happened in the.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
United States is and I've done a lot of research
on the pandemic. Why I got polarized, why it happened
in the United States is because I think Donald Trump,
and especially like Fox News and influencers who were supporting
Donald Trump, down played the risk of the pandemic, and
Democratic leaders took it very seriously. And so Trump was
saying in January that it wasn't going to be a

(41:22):
big deal. He said this through February, he said this
into March. I have like all the video clips of it.
As early as January. Joe Biden, who wasn't even the
nominee yet for the Democrats, wrote an article in USA
Today saying Trump was the worst possible leader to handle
the pandemic, and so he had, like the future president
and future leader of Democrats and the leader of Republicans

(41:42):
treating it very differently.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
And that happened throughout much of the pandemic.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
And things changed a little bit. But the you know,
Democrats were locked down much more. You know, Trump was
throwing huge like campaign rallies and events when it wasn't
when it wasn't advisable before vaccines were available. And so
the pandemic here and all the data backs up, was
polarized from the very earliest stages, from February in March
of twenty twenty, and it never really returned. Republicans were

(42:10):
more against masks, they were far less likely to get vaccinated.
In fact, we have some data showing that whether you're
from a Republican or democratic part of the country, it
was the single biggest predictor of vaccination rates. We talked
a lot about things like race, or socio economic status, poverty, education,
none of those things was remotely close to just your
partisan affiliation. Okay, so that gives you a sense of

(42:33):
how that worked.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
And so, but it didn't have to be that case.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
I looked in data sixty seven countries in a study
I ran, and whether you're conservative or liberal was almost
completely uncorrelated with your attitude towards the pandemic around the
rest of the world.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
And so it didn't have to be polarized in the US.
If Trump had taken it seriously from day one, you
would have seen no polarization. That would have been much
more of a source of shared identity. Why leaders are
so important. They can make things a source to rally
together or divide.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
People and focus on different groups the political parties instead
of American identity.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Right yeah, yeah, And so especially if you do identify
as a Democrat or a Liberal, whatever your leadership is
saying one thing, like if Democrats had also decided to
not take it seriously, maybe we would have all united
around not taking it seriously. But our different leaders were
saying different things, which was also very confusing. I think
for real lot of.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
People, it's a health disaster.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
I think I ran the numbers on from Canada.

Speaker 4 (43:34):
In Canada, there's polarizations a Conservative party, Liberal party, but
there was a really good study analyzing their leaders rhetoric
in the early months of the pandemic, and they both
take it seriously. And then you look at national polls
and Canadians both ticket from across the spectrum ticket seriously.
And that changed after a couple of years in vaccine mandates,
but for two years and then the death rate in
Canada was way way lower than the United States, and

(43:58):
so it was really something that could have gone another
way if if leaders had been on the same page
about it In the US.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
I mean, it's just it's it's very scary.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
I mean, the wrong leader, just saying the wrong thing
can have such an impact on so many lives. I
have nothing smart to say about that other than that
I wish that we weren't so drawn to the dark
triad characteristics. I mean, I wish that there was something
that we could do to not make ourselves want to
follow the really really loud, self obsessed people.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
Yeah, I mean, this is this is one of the
reasons we wrote our book is to try to teach
people about how groups work so they could make them better.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
You know, whether it's like their.

Speaker 4 (44:39):
Own like you know, fan group, or there's an a
trivia club or something like that, or their daughter's soccer
team they're coaching, or if it's like society. We have
to understand how we're being manipulated, how identity is often
being used against us. And that's the that's the part
of cult psychology that's so interesting, right, Like, if you
understand how you're being manipulated, how the you off from

(45:00):
family and friends, how they're eliminating your other sources of identity,
then maybe you'll be like you'll have a little like
Spidey sense, it gets tingled when you interact with somebody
who's trying to, like, you know, lure you into a
group with those types of traits, you'll identify it as
more toxic and escape it sooner. And so that's kind
of the thing that we want to do, is like,
if you give people the knowledge, you're building up their

(45:21):
own immunity.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
You know, we'll go back to the pandemic.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
It's kind of like building up their own immunity to
when they encounter that because it is like a virus
and it's contagious and it can be very damaging to
groups of people.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
How does group identity evolve from just feeling connected to
our group to just straight up hating people in the
other group?

Speaker 5 (45:46):
Does that?

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Is that a leadership thing? Or is that more like
something charged happens and we need someone to blame for it, Like,
how does that happen?

Speaker 3 (45:55):
A great question?

Speaker 4 (45:56):
So usually I started with that great study where people
flip a coin and great two group.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
That usually doesn't lead to outgroup hat.

Speaker 4 (46:03):
In fact, we've find lots of studies, and usually what
it does is just boost your positive feelings towards the
in group and wanting resources for the in group. But
it doesn't necessarily lead you to want to dislike or
punish the outgroup. The really the hate of the outgroup
stems from leadership. It stems from developing specific negative stereotypes
about them, and I would argue the two other biggest

(46:24):
things that drive it are competition for scarce resources, so
like only one party gets power or only one group
gets the sacred land. And then the other part about
sacred is morality is once you think the other group
is doing something evil, then it's impossible to cooperate with them.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
It's one to thing that to think that other group's
just stupid or.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
Incompetent, because you can always like work with them or
cooperate with them at some level.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
But if you think they're doing something evil, you will
do everything you can to stop them. You'll really despise them.

Speaker 4 (46:56):
And so a lot of the rhetoric of leaders who
are really kind of the bad kind of leaders or
cult leaders are trying to convince you that this other
group or this other thing happening is actually evil. It's
not just that it's wrong or that it's dumb, but
that it's evil, and that seems to be a real
motivator to mobilize people into a tight group, but also
to get them to really hate.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
That other group.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Right, that's that's so interesting. My brain was making connections
in many different areas of life as you were saying that.
You know, I see that on both sides of the
political aisle. For sure, there's a moralizing how the other
people must possess no morality whatsoever, and also in culture
groups and the way that you know, often the public
will look at a look at members of a cult

(47:39):
and assume that they are all evil rather than that
they are being manipulated or abused in some way. And
then you know, that can just lead to further like
the people in the group doubling down on what they
believe because they're being told that they're evil, which is
an attack on their identity.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's the other thing that really
gets people to rally, and this happens a lot with polarization.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Is one of the reasons people hate.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
The other party is because they think the other party
really hates them. And so if you just communicate that
actually the other group doesn't hate you nearly as much
as you think. They chill out a little bit and
become much more open minded and willing to engage with
that person. But part of it is they've been told
constantly by leaders by like extreme TV and news and
radio and social media that they're watching that the other

(48:22):
party on average really despises and disrespects them and hates
them and thinks they're evil. And so that's one of
the things that is a real way to create conflict
is just convince people that the other side hates them.

Speaker 6 (48:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Oh, it's kind of like I tell you all the
ways you're being manipulated.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
I also realized, like this would be terrible if some
dictator got a hold of this podcast.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Those dictators listen to the turn it off right now.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
The toolbox for manipulation.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Unfortunately, I'm literally in a Netflix series called How to
Become a Cult Leader. I'm in I am in that series,
but I don't want anyone to actually do it. No, no,
it So if somebody wanted to intervene with someone and
we talked about it a little, but maybe you have
more wisdom on this with someone who's in a cult
or like really lodged in a group, thinky situation, like

(49:08):
what would be a constructive way to signal to that
person that you are not the enemy and kind of
start a conversation.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Yeah, So the first thing I would say is like,
don't attack their beliefs, like we talked about, try to listen,
try to understand where they're coming from and what this
group's doing for them. Another thing you can do is
ask them questions, Oh, why do you stick with them?

Speaker 3 (49:26):
What do you like about them?

Speaker 4 (49:28):
You know, ask them questions and get them to think
more critically and deeply about what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
And people often really comfortable with that.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
And then sometimes they realize they don't know why they're
doing it, or it starts to not make sense to them.
But you know, this is just like classic Socratic questioning,
and it gets them to realize, like some of the
explanations they've been told don't make sense. Some of the
stories they've heard at the cult don't make sense. So
that's one thing you can do. The other thing, and
this is really key, and this is for like, let's say,
if your family members are deeping QAnon, and I have

(49:58):
an uncle who I think is gone down that rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
It really sucks. I really care about this person.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
The instinct you have and I have, is like cut
them off, block them on social media, don't engage with them.
And over time I realize that's probably the wrong instinct.
What you want to do is keep an open relationship
with them so that when they're ready to come out,
that they know that they can talk to you and
you will be supportive and non judgmental. And I think
if it is similar to like someone who's imagine you
had a friend and I've had a friend in an

(50:25):
abusive relationship.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
And they're not ready to leave it. You can't just
drag them out of it. They've got to be ready
to leave.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
But it's really important that they know that they have
supports when they are ready to leave, because if they've
lost all those connections and support, which is by the way,
that's what abusive partners do is cut their partners off
from all their family and friends and isolate them. Is
you need to be there so that they know that
they have a rope to escape. And so that's the
other thing, is you need to be there. I think
if you have someone who's gone down this extreme pathway

(50:53):
into these kind of cult or conspiracy mentalities, that you're
going to be there, that you're going to be non judgmental,
that you're going to for them, that you care about
them as a person, regardless of if you disagree on
this thing.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
You shouldn't obviously agree on.

Speaker 4 (51:05):
It, but I think it's like important to signal that
you're there check in on them, because what happens is
as they go deeper and deeper in the cult, that's
often the first stage.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
They often enjoy it.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
It's a group of people, it's really fun, it's engaging,
presence of community, a belonging distinctiveness. But then often once
you go deeper down, then you start to get manipulated, abused, blackmail, misled,
And so you want to be there for when they
start to realize that's too much and they start having
these feelings of like cognitive dissonance, like this doesn't feel right.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
You want to be there to let them know that
there's some offer for them right.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Literally, yesterday, a very good friend of mine who has
been in what, in my opinion is an abusive relationship
called me, and they have no other friends left in
their life, but called me and asked if I would
support them if they left their partner.

Speaker 6 (51:54):
Oh wow, So what did you do to signal to
that friend that it was safe at any time to
call you even though they have no more friends and
family in.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Touch with them.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Well, initially my response to their partner was to be like,
they're bad, they're bad for you. Look at what they're doing,
they're bad for you. That clearly didn't work, so I
changed tack and started telling them I support whatever decision
you make. I want you to be happy, and if
this is making you happy, I support that, and just
continued to call them even when I wasn't really hearing
from them a lot. So you know, listen, maybe they won't,

(52:28):
maybe this attempt won't succeed, because that's very common, but
it does make me feel like, Okay, I did I
did the right thing.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
Yeah, that's like, you know, almost textbook what I would
have recommended.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
So it sounds like.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
You it's just now take that and apply that to
a friend who's in a cult or conspiratorial community.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Right, totally.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Ugh, it's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting to make all these connections.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
I know, are groups good? Can they be good? I
just feel like there's so much for bad and I
know they can be good, but I need you to
tell me.

Speaker 4 (53:03):
Okay, so this is a a conceptional Well, first, let
me ask you both, off the top of your head,
on average, ignoring what I've talked about today, do you
think groups are forces for good or evil in the
wall or neutral?

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Both?

Speaker 4 (53:16):
Both?

Speaker 6 (53:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (53:18):
Both?

Speaker 2 (53:18):
But I would say in the past, like a few years,
it's I just feel like I'm getting inundated with evidence
of their badness, so it's hard for me to like
remember that there is goodness to it as well.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
And I've never been in a good group project, so.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Group projects are the worst. So I'm going to go
with leaning towards bad.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Yeah, okay, So I think groups are both. They have
the potential to be good or bad. It's the leadership
and the and the culture norms we create in them
that matters. The problem is that the way that the
media and social media present things is they find the
worst examples.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
So we'll talk way.

Speaker 4 (53:56):
More about QAnon than we will about a community group
that's like you know, give you know, running a soup
kitchen or like cleaning up the neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Right, that stuff doesn't make the news. It's not that interesting.
There's no podcasts on it.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
It's funner to talk about these groups that are really pathological,
and we can't stop it because it is important to
understand them.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
But it's just also more interesting.

Speaker 4 (54:16):
It's the same reason there's like I mean, I love
these movies like like serial serial killer, movies like Dahmer
and stuff. Will endlessly be talking about Jeffrey Dahmer and
serial killers even though they're incredibly rare. The vast majority
of people would never, couldn't do that even if they
wanted to. And so that's one of the things we
have to understand. Individuals like serial killers are rare, and
it doesn't mean people are intrinsically evil. And groups, even

(54:39):
though they can be like Quanon or cults, can do
evil things too, even though they're not intrinsically evil. So
it's just the same logic you apply to individuals, you
should apply to groups and understand. You know, I go
to like you know, it's Clara a big sports fan.
You know, I took my stepdad for his birthday to
a hockey game and it's like twenty thousand people with
their arch rivals. People are yelling all in their uniforms.

(55:01):
Some people of face paint, but like not a single
semblance of violence, like light, I'm surrounded by people with
jerseys from the other teams and they were in a
bigger pool of people from the home team, and no
one harassed anybody. They give them some light ribbing and stuff, right,
But this happens every day, all day, NonStop, with huge crowds,
with our tribals playing each other, and it almost never

(55:22):
ever spills over to anything bad or violent, even though
you think, well, our nature is to be group. Is
you put fifty thousand people in a stadium, get them
all riled up, get them wearing the same thing and chanting.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
It's not going to be good, but almost always it's good.

Speaker 4 (55:36):
And so it's the reason is because we have norms
and expectations about what it means to be a sports fan,
that certain things are allowed, like light ribbing and teasing,
but not to cross the line. And so I think
that you can do that with any group, that we
can scale that to huge groups, we can scale it
to countries.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
A lot of countries.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
We could think national borders would lead to more war,
but there's actually been way less people dying for war
than there were one hundred years ago. In fact, for
now part of like this the most peaceful last fifty
years in human history in terms of group warfare. And
so we've gotten better and better by creating healthier norms
and institutions. So that's why I think like the lesson
from all this is that we have this disposition, this

(56:14):
is evolutionary, evolutionarily very old brain with this potential, but
we can harness it in ways that like do these
amazing things, or we can let evil people harness in
ways that cause conflicts. I think it's like for us
not to be manipulated by the evil people and then
the burdens on us for to create healthy groups. And
that means even if it's like a study group or
a work group, you know, there's lots. I've been the

(56:34):
person like at midnight the night before trying to finish
the group project because no one showed up in my
house or carried their role. And so it's like ever
since I've been always thinking, Okay, well, how can we
assign the tasks for fairly? How can we set a schedule?
And now I've got that that's like an art I
can run. I do group projects all day long with
my research team and it's like smooth and fun and

(56:54):
easy and almost no conflict. But it took many years
of figuring out how to master it. And I think
that's the thing about groups. It's like a skill. Managing
a group is a skill, and you can do it
well or you can leave it to the people who
are going to do it not well. Those will be
your narcissists in your psychopaths and your machiavellian type people,
and they're always going to be there. They're going to

(57:15):
try to get power and run groups and organizations, and
we have to kind of like stand up against them
and not let them be the only people who have
that that power and that that voice.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Right, So what I'm hearing is that we need to
start another podcast that just talks about good groups. Good
group be really boring.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Would be what would be the opposite of a cult?

Speaker 4 (57:34):
So let's think of it, like, what is a group
that's the opposite of cult in your mind?

Speaker 1 (57:38):
A community? A chess club, Yeah, a little community the
people who like swim every morning or something, just you know,
it's not your whole life, but it gives you a
sense of belongingness and meaning.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Yeah, I mean opposite of a cult. Every group has
the potential to be cult, but in and morning swim No,
I mean there are many.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
And they're all surrounding us, like people who have book
clubs and I have a writers We have all these
little things that we don't think of but are really
like the air we breathe, because that's actually what we
do most of the day, is like moving and out
of like actually probably pretty healthy groups.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yeah. Yeah, well this has been so enlightening and I
feel like a little shred of hope about humanity from
this conversation. So thank you for that.

Speaker 5 (58:29):
Do you want to tell people what your book.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Is and where they can find you and your work?

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Yeah? Great. So my name is Jay van Babel.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
My book is called The Power of Us that it
was written with Dominic Packer, and we have a website
called power off Us dot online where.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
You can look at some ray of the book.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
We also have a free newsletter that comes out weekly
where we talk about all kinds of stuff like this,
cults and groups and organizations and politics, and we also.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Try to make it all based on science and evidence.

Speaker 4 (58:57):
That's kind of also kind of, in my view, the
opposite of a cult, which is all mythology and narrative
and manipulation.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
We try to make people smarter about groups.

Speaker 4 (59:05):
So if you want to get smarter about groups, if
you please buy the book or join the newsletter and
hopefully help you on that pathway.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
I love it. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Thank you, thanks for having me. This is a lot
of fun. I love to talk about this stuff.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah, oh my god, he's so cool like me.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, you're the coolest.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Okay. So is there any group that you hate so
much that you end up identifying with the opposite thing
even though you're not completely sold on their message.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
That I hate so much. I don't know if I
would use the word hate, but I think that like
I do. I definitely notice that when I'm talking to
a man and he is really drawn to a particular
set of figures who we've talked about a little bit
on here, like people in the intellectual dark Web or whatever,
like if he really likes Benchabuiro or really likes, you know,

(59:58):
Dave Ruben or Jordan Peters's and I have an instant
aversion to it, and it makes me. I find myself
casting judgments on him and then wanting to go to
the other side of and like I've like literally like
found myself being like, oh my god, I have to
find the community of people who hate these guys, which
of course is not correct. I mean I recognize that,

(01:00:19):
and I have and I have like made efforts to
like actually try to see what it is that is
in their messaging that's resonating with people, because I think
that's really important because obviously it's so many, it's like
millions of people who love these guys. There's something about
them that's like appealing to people, and I want to
see what that is. But my first instinct that I'm
fighting against is definitely like no.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Bad you, reality show idea you and Ben Shapiro an
Island go.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
And then what we fuck?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Like no you fight and then you find peace?

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
God maybe it's through fucking.

Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
I don't know, no, uh.

Speaker 4 (01:00:58):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Part of my version, I think comes from how much
I see them railing against any progressive values. Like so
I see how much it's like their whole platform is
based on like not wanting to have to use people's
chosen pronouns or you know, a resistance to what they
view as policing of language, which I think can be true. Sometimes,

(01:01:22):
but they do it so vehemently that it makes me
feel like, oh, they hate me and my values, so
I need to hate them back.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
And that's what he said.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
That is, but he's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Oh my god, wow, we fixed it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
It's done.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
Yeah. So I but that I think that is a
really a big part of it. They're like trying to
own libs and own libs and own libs, and you know,
and I'm like, well that's me. So it's like, leave
me alone then, guy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Yeah, you know, you get them served, You got served.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
I get it. But like I said, I don't I
don't think people who listen to those guys don't there's
anything inherently wrong or bad about this people. I think that,
like I just personally have aversion to those to that
way of viewing the world. Yeah, and hopefully you can
find common ground with all the three men who listen
to this podcast who also like those guys.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Give a little note in our endbox. We are so
glad y'all joined us this week. We cannot wait to
see you here again next week. And as always, remember
to follow your gut, watch out for red flags, and never.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Ever trust me. Bye bye, you trust Me is produced
by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp and Steve Delamater.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
With special thanks to Stacy Para and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult Pod, or on TikTok at trust.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Me Cult Podcast. I'm Oola Lola on Instagram and Ola
Lola on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Babraham
Hits on Twitter.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Remember to rate and review and spread the word

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
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REWIND: Jay Van Bavel - Groupthink, Social Identity, and Cult Psychology

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}REWIND: Jay Van Bavel - Groupthink, Social Identity, and Cult Psychology