The Psychology of Belonging: How Groups Shape Who We Are | With Jay Van Bavel Ph.D.

Groups can bring us together to accomplish things none of us could achieve alone. They can also fuel prejudice, division, and conflict. The groups we belong to shape whom we trust and how our brains respond to the people around us.

NYU psychologist Jay Van Bavel has spent his career studying what makes groups so powerful and how we can harness that power for good. In this episode of Power & Impact, Jay and I explore the influence groups have on everything from our relationships to our politics.

We discuss what happens when people lose their connections to groups and communities, including rising loneliness among young adults and the decline of traditional community institutions. Jay also talks about whether AI companions, with their tendency to tell us what we want to hear, could further weaken the social bonds that bring us together.

In the workplace, Jay explains how groups develop their own cultures, why influential employees often have no formal leadership role, and how psychological safety helps teams work together more effectively. These ideas are central to his forthcoming book, Smarter Together.

Perhaps nowhere is the power of group identity more apparent today than in our deeply polarized politics. Jay explains why we exaggerate our differences with people on the other side, how those perceptions fuel hostility, and what it might take to bridge the divide.