Jay Van Bavel is an associate professor of psychology and Neural Science at New York University. His research investigates the psychology and neuroscience of implicit bias, group identity, team performance, decision-making, and public health.
What distinguishes a random collection of people on a subway from a meaningful psychological group? Research on inter-brain coupling suggests that when people collectively focus and coordinate action, shared identity springs to life.
As the Gaza-Israel conflict began escalating last month, there were widely circulated reports that Israeli spectators had gathered on garden chairs and old sofas to cheer as bombs rained down on people living in Gaza just a few miles away.