Heading into the holidays
Dec 2021: New papers on national narcissism, articles in The Guardian and LA Times, and some encouragement to embrace your identities outside of science
After nearly two years in a pandemic, and with another dangerous variant on the horizon, a lot of us are running out of energy to turn lemons into lemonade. Thankfully we just had a good break and another one is around the corner…
On the heels of a break spent with family, friends, and—importantly—our identities outside of our professional lives, we wanted to share Jay’s latest column encouraging members of the scientific community to do a better job embracing people’s lives outside of science. Breaks often allow us to be reminded of our passions, interests, and identities outside of our work, and we believe that time to engage with these sides of ourselves should not be confined to a few weeks out of the year. You can be equally passionate about science as you are about many other elements of your life—and we should be supporting and celebrating the multitude of identities that live within us all year long.
We recommend checking out the piece below—which was inspired by Victoria Spring’s secret second life as a bestselling fiction author.
Papers and reports
Jay recently contributed to a report for the EU Commission! As an interdisciplinary collaboration, it applies the latest science on values and identities to policymaking.
We have a new paper in press in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin led by Anni Sternisko! It explores the role of national narcissism in the belief and dissemination of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. With evidence from 56 countries, we found a positive relationship between national narcissism and proneness to believe and disseminate conspiracy theories related to COVID-19. You can read the pre-print here.
Anni also recently had another paper accepted at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, which found that national narcissism was related to support of policies that protect the national image at the expense of in-group members’ health. Her co-authors on this paper are Bjarki Gronfeldt, Aleksandra Cichocka, Aleksandra Cislak, and Irem Eker, and you can read the pre-print here.
Lab member shoutouts
A big congratulations to our former lab member Billy Brady for winning the SPSP SAGE Emerging Scholar Award! You can learn more about Billy’s research on his website.
PhD student Anni Sternisko has several other exciting announcements this month! She recently gave a talk at the NATO workshop "Fighting disinformation in a pandemic world: the role of AI and cognitive sciences," as well as at the “Social Implications of Conspiracy Theories" meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology. Go Anni!
Collaborate with us!
We are planning to launch another global study next year (see our last newsletter for another recent global collaboration) comparing interventions that target collective action against climate change. If you’d like to join us—either by collecting data in a country we need it in, proposing an intervention, or donating monetarily—please fill out the form in this tweet! The massive project is being led by Madalina Vlasceanu & Kimberly Doell so please reach out to them with any questions.
In the media
Visiting researcher Steve Rathje recently had his work covered in The Wall Street Journal! His research (with collaborators Jamil Zaki and former lab PhD student Leor Hackel) found that attending live theater led to increases in empathy and pro-social behavior.
Jay and his co-author Dominic Packer published an op-ed about polarization (and how we aren’t as polarized as we think we are) in The Guardian:
And another op-ed in Los Angeles Times about how individualism is perhaps the ultimate form of American conformity.
Research affiliate Madalina Vlasceanu recently had her work on belief change strategies covered by Psypost! She found that people are more likely to update their belief when the difference between a person’s prediction and the correct answer is significant.
The Power of Us
If you’re a student on a budget, or it you’ve been meaning to check out The Power of Us but haven’t yet had the chance, you can get access to the book for just a few dollars! During our sale on December 5th, you can purchase the ebook for $2.99 on Amazon and other digital retailers. It makes a great stocking stuffer.
If you’d like to learn more about the book before buying, you can head over to the book’s website or read The Power of Us newsletter (the latest edition covered tips for surviving a polarized Thanksgiving—which may prove to be helpful for other holiday gatherings that are just around the corner).
Jay and his co-author Dominic Packer have been quite busy with podcasts and talks since the launch of The Power of Us. Here’s the video of Jay’s talk at the Behavior Change For Good (BCFG) event, which highlighted how shared identity can help us become better people.
Jay was recently interviewed on the Game Changing Attorney podcast, where he discussed the impact of social media, influence, and why people identify with certain groups (check out the cool promo vid below).
And finally, Jay was on the Curious Minds at Work podcast to talk about navigating the good (and the bad) of our shared identities.
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 to share exciting career updates or job opportunities (we’d love to hear what you’re up to!).
That’s all, folks—thanks for reading and we’ll see you next month!