Ep 75: Dominic Packer | Overcoming groupthink and harnessing the power of our shared identities for good

Cognitive dissonance is  the extremely uncomfortable feeling we get when we face new information that we know to be true but doesn’t align with our identities or beliefs.

The alarming things about cognitive dissonance is the lengths we will go to to preserve our identity rather than face a new reality.

In this episode, I chat with Dominic Packer, a professor of psychology at Lehigh University, who along with his friend and colleague, Jay Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, co-authored the book, “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony.”

Dominic and I discuss how ignoring information we know to be true simply because it doesn’t align with our chosen group’s identities leads to polarization, distrust, and a rush to wall-off and create a harmonious bubble of groupthink, and ways we can counteract such things.

Check out the Power of Us book at https://www.powerofus.online and join Dominic and Jay's newsletter at https://powerofus.substack.com. You can follow Dominic on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dominicpacker_.