Happy New Year!
Understanding the role of social identity in the spread of covid conspiracy theories, climate change beliefs, and anti-democratic behavior
Welcome to 2022—we hope that everyone had a restful vacation and managed to stay safe! Before we wrap up the year, we wanted to share a few new projects that came out in December.
New research papers
Our new paper on national narcissism and conspiracy theory beliefs (led by PhD student Anni Sternisko, Aleksandra Cichocka, Aleksandra Cislak, and Jay) is now published in Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin.
Another new paper led by post-docs Kim Doell and Philip Pärnamets, PhD student Elizabeth Harris, former PhD student Leor Hackel, and Jay is out in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences! It reviews the role of partisan identity in climate change belief and behavior:
Jay has a new pre-print out (with Alexander Haslam, Stephen Reicher, Hema Preya Selvanathan, and eight other authors) that introduces a dual-agency model of identity leadership and engaged followership analyzing linguistic evidence from the January 6th insurrection:
Postdoc Madalina Vlasceanu (with Michael Morais and Alin Coman) has a new paper out in Journal of Cognition and Culture! They found that belief synchronization is influenced by a community’s conversational network structure:
Public Outreach
NYU recently created a new video interview with Jay that describes the work we are doing in the Social Identity & Morality lab, including both the good and the bad of group identity and the importance of understanding group dynamics. The video nicely features some of Diego’s dissertation research, but confuses Jay’s class with our lab :(
Jay was recently featured on the “Lunch with Lincoln” segment of The Lincoln Project podcast to break down the psychology of the January 6th insurrection:
On a recent episode of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, Jay and Carl Erik Fisher discussed the relevance of group identity for addiction and recovery and the “gravitational pull” of social groups, among other things:
Jay was also featured on a recent episode of the Digging Deep podcast, where he discussed why we fail at our goals when we try to go it alone, how identity shapes our response to tragedy, and more:
Job opportunities
Our collaborators at the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics are hiring a full-time software engineer to help build software and tools for collecting, processing, analyzing, and understanding large social media data sets:
Our collaborator, Robb Willer of the Stanford University Polarization and Social Change Lab, is hiring a research coordinator to begin in Spring or Summer of 2022:
We are happy to share other positions from our lab alumni and collaborators. See the bottom of this newsletter for more details.
The Power of Us
Jay’s new book, The Power of Us, became a #1 Bestseller on Amazon in multiple countries last month (albeit briefly) in a couple different book categories. It also made appearances in some great lists and articles over the past month! Here are some noteworthy features:
Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Books of 2021
Habit Weekly’s Top 100 Behavioral Design books
An article in NY Times Opinion exploring “the big question”: Is life better when we’re together?
We Contain Multitudes
In our last newsletter, we talked about the importance of celebrating our identities outside of science. This month, we want to showcase the talents, hobbies, and passions of some of our amazing lab members:
Left—PhD student Anni Sternisko at a race (she’s training for the NY marathon next year); Top center—post-doc and famous YA author Victoria Spring with their newest book, A Lesson in Vengeance; Right—former PhD student and research affiliate Diego Reinero being an awesome uncle, coaching soccer, cooking, and singing acapella; Bottom middle—lab manager Katie Brown hiking in the Montana wilderness!
In case you missed last month’s newsletter:
As always, if you have any photos, news, or research you’d like to have included in this newsletter, please reach out to Katie (nyu.vanbavel.lab@gmail.com). We encourage former lab members and collaborators to share exciting career updates or job opportunities—we’d love to hear what you’re up to and help sustain a flourishing community. Please also drop comments below about anything you like about the newsletter or would like us to add.
That’s all, folks—thanks for reading and we’ll see you next month!