Celebration & Polarization, Holiday Survival Kit (Part 3): Identity with all the Trimmings
December 14th 2021
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Can a German town be socially divided by sneakers? Or the Canadian landmass united by a beer commercial? And is US individualism more a group identity than its ardently individualistic citizens would ever admit?
Tune in to the third and final episode in our Holiday Survival Kit, Identity with All the Trimmings, featuring Psychology Professor Dominic Packer of Lehigh University for answers to these and other important questions around the topic of social identity. Dr. Packer is the co-author, along with Jay Van Bavel of NYU, of the newly minted and highly illuminating book, The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Social Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation and Promote Social Harmony. We kick off the interview with Packer’s retelling of the book’s opening tale: how tensions (and odors) created by Van Bavel’s hockey bag were quickly erased by a life-saving intervention at an academic reception.
We’ll also hear Dr. Packer’s thoughts on why COVID became more politically polarized in the US than any other nation; how social media amplifies our differences; but also how Wikipedia presents ideas toward better management of enmity and misinformation rampant on social media platforms.
Last but not least, we’ll test Dr. Packer’s ability to implement his research in an all-too-common (if fictionalized) role play with TPP host Rob Pease playing Dominic’s anti-vax Cousin Rob. Can Dominic sway Cousin Rob toward vaccination prior to the family holiday gathering? And why, at this point in the pandemic, does anyone need convincing on vaccination?
Yes, it does often seem we live in an age of utter madness. But social identity helps explain many of these viewpoints and behaviors. Join us for an informative and entertaining discussion with Dr. Dominic Packer. And be prepared to discover a few things about your own identity in the process.
SHOW NOTES
Our Guest
Dominic Packer: Twitter, Faculty Page, Google Scholar
Buy his book, co-authored with Jay van Bavel:
Additional Resources
Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online (Nature)
Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks (PNAS)
Who voted for the People’s Party of Canada? Anti-vaxxers and those opposed to vaccine mandates (The Conversation)
I Am Not American: What can beer ads tell us about our national identity? (National Post)
Where Puma and Adidas Were Like Hatfields and McCoys (Wall Street Journal)
The Herd of Independent Minds: Has the Avant-Garde Its Own Mass Culture? (Commentary Magazine)
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TRANSCRIPT
Dominic Packer
This is an amazing story of a little town in Southern Germany with a river running through it. It's, by all accounts, beautiful and picturesque, and it became bitterly divided.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That’s Dominic Packer, professor of psychology at Lehigh University and co-author of the new book, The Power of US: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony.
Dominic Packer
So before the Second World War, there was a shoe company run by two brothers. But they became bitter rivals and it broke the company apart. And they built these companies into what we now know as large behemoths, Adidas and Puma. And it became known as the town of “bent necks” because everyone spent their whole time staring down at each other's shoes to figure out, are you one of us or are you one of them?
Robert Pease (co-host)
It’s polarization right down to our sneakers today on the Purple Principle. One of the many great examples in this new book on the power of identity. My identity is Robert Pease: lifelong political independent and creator of this podcast about the perils of polarization.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
And mine is Jillian Youngblood, co-host here and Executive Director of Civic Genius, a non-profit, non-partisan civic engagement group where we bump into that divisive power of identity all too often. But — full disclosure — I wear Nikes up here in the Pacific Northwest.
Robert Pease (co-host)
I’m a bit more sneaker-agnostic. But, generally, we all want to fit in somewhere, don’t we? That’s a big part of social identity. Dr. Packer will give us a deeper understanding of how that natural impulse can end up polarizing neighborhoods and towns. That was the case with Adidas & Puma decades ago and it is the trend today at the national level here in the US, and in other countries as well.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
The Power of Us is co-written by Dr. Packer and fellow Canadian neuropsychologist, Jay Van Bavel, who’ve long been research partners. So at the risk of stereotyping our neighbors to the north, how “aboot” we kick things off with smelly hockey bags, eh? And the story of two Canadian grad students riven by pungent goalie gear who bond over a perilous cheeseboard incident of a very different variety.
[Into Interview]
Dominic Packer
So I arrived at graduate school a year ahead of Jay. I was there a year before him and I established my office and it was not glamorous. It was a sub-basement of the building (so the basement below the basement where they used to have the rat labs). So I had my space and there was an empty desk in the room. And so a year later, Jay showed up and he was seeking out a desk and he found this desk. But then the next day he brought in this massive bag of hockey equipment. He was a goalie, so he had a lot of equipment, and — if you've ever been around a goalie's hockey bag — it smells, right? And he said, “Oh, I've just moved into my apartment and it's tiny and I have nowhere to keep my hockey bag. I mean, do you mind if I store it here?” And I guess — maybe being Canadian — I was a little too polite to say no, but I did resent it. In any case, a couple of months later, we went to a departmental wine and cheese event. An eminent speaker came in and then afterward Jay and I were talking to some people and he was mindlessly eating bits of cheese (as you do). And then he suddenly choked on a piece and we rushed out to a nearby restroom across the hall. And I clumsily administered the Heimlich and we managed to get the cheese out of him. And from that moment — I think this is what we say in the book — it changed our relationship.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That’s awesome, Dominic. Well done, if we can congratulate you 15 years late on that. I believe you came to Ohio as a post-doc, as did your co-author Jay van Bavel. And we actually have a clip from Jay’s interview in Season One talking about the epiphany he had arriving in the US during the 2008 election.
[Archival audio: Jay van Bavel]
So the story here starts with the fact that I'm Canadian and wasn't really that interested in American politics at all. And suddenly, my Ph.D. advisor got recruited away to Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and I moved with him. And at the time I was really interested in-group identity, and how it changes the way that you think about all kinds of things in the world. And then it was the lead-up to the 2008 national presidential election in the U.S. And at the time, Ohio was the biggest swing state in the country. And so every presidential candidate and vice-presidential candidate constantly came through Ohio over and over and over again. And the campus was swarmed with people trying to register voters. I was obsessed with it. I became a total U.S. political junkie, even though I couldn't vote.
Robert Pease (co-host)
I wonder, Dominic if you had a similar kind of epiphany coming from Canada and landing in a swing state: Ohio.
Dominic Packer
Yeah, so I think I was always a little more interested in American politics than Jay was, but then we ended up both in Ohio and I think it was eye-opening for both of us because, as you say, Canada is a multi-party system; it's a parliamentary system. So there's certainly lots of contested issues in Canadian politics, but there isn't this, you know, us-versus-them rivalry in quite the same sentence. It doesn't all boil down to: are you a Republican or you're Democrat? And there's real consequences to that during that election in 2008. I should say it's when Obama was elected as President. Just by pure coincidence, we were meeting with a friend and we went out to a bar. We went to a hotel bar and it happened to be the hotel where the McCain campaign was planning to hold — in Columbus, Ohio — was going to hold their victory reception. And then, of course, he lost. And so we were surrounded in the bar by some very depressed Republicans, which again — as someone not deeply invested in it at the time — it was more of an anthropological experience than a political one. But certainly, I think the American political dynamic is something we've both become very interested in as compared to some other nations like Canada.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And in your book, you mentioned during the COVID pandemic that COVID wasn't politicized to the same degree. There was no major Canadian leader who downplayed the pandemic. But you recently had an election and I believe there's a far-right party that may have gotten some traction over vaccine or masking mandates. So, do you think polarization is creeping north, or is it just bubbling up naturally in Canada?
Dominic Packer
So polarization is on the rise in many nations, though not everywhere. But I don't think it's reached anything like the proportions it's reached down here (in the United States) up in Canada. Or indeed even in the United Kingdom, which is an interesting case because it's a very polarized society, but it's differently polarized. It became polarized over Brexit. But I do have to say, I think two-party systems can — there can be this more intense rivalry just because there are just two groups. But it was not inevitable that the pandemic response became polarized in the United States; that's not an inevitability in a two-party system. I think it was choices by political leaders, especially the former President and his group. They decided they were going to treat it in a particular way, which downplayed the severity of the virus initially and then have always been resistant and therefore it inspired resistance in their followers toward vaccines toward masks and so on. And we just didn't see that happening in many other countries.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Was it also politicized by our media? I mean, former President Trump took a lot of cues from right-wing media, and then there was this kind of feedback loop. And in Canada, you have a national broadcasting system that adheres to very professional standards. Do you think that's a mitigating factor?
Dominic Packer
I do. I think the media landscape plays a role, certainly. And I think the media in the United States really just views the world in large part through the lens of politics. Is it good for the Democrats or is it good for the Republicans? And then the pandemic got interpreted in that lens. “Is this good for the Republicans? Is this good for the Democrats?” is a ridiculous way to talk about a pandemic that is bad for all of us, right? And it could have been a moment of unity. It could've been a moment to say, “We all face this pretty grave threat. What are we going to do? And only by collectively getting together can we address it effectively.” Cut we sort of failed to have that moment. So there was an interesting event a few months ago — maybe a month ago — where Donald Trump was at a rally. He encouraged briefly the people at the rally to get the vaccine and he got booed.
[Archival Audio-Donald Trump Rally Speech]
Dominic Packer
And since then he has not done that, right? I mean, we know he's vaccinated and he's probably got the booster, right? He may even think it's a good idea for people to get vaccinated, but he very quickly learned that's not what his crowds want to hear. So he's not going to say it, even though in my personal opinion, the single most important thing that could happen to advancing our pandemic response is Donald Trump to stand up and say, “Go get a vaccine.” He might get booed, but people would listen to him and it would get many more people vaccinated. And that would be really important.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Yeah. That was unfortunate. A lot of our listeners are independent or non-affiliated voters for various reasons because of our branding and our guests and our topics, they're going to tend to be more centrists — as you know, the parties have moved apart over the last 50 years. So we just wonder from a Canadian perspective, do you have some empathy for more centrist, independent-minded Americans? And does it make you wonder, “What you've had a few hundred years; why didn't you create a third party at some point?”
Dominic Packer
Oh, I certainly have sympathy for independents. In fact, I've lived here for 12 years and I still don't fully understand the American political system. I'll be honest. I have submitted my paperwork to become a citizen but in Canada, you don't register for a party in the way you do here. So there are no registered Conservatives or Liberals, which are the two most dominant parties. People can support parties — like they might donate money — but they don't register as a voter of a particular party. So that dynamic itself — it's strange to me. And it's, I think, more normative in Canada for people to not necessarily call themselves independents, but to flexibly move between voting for one party or another, depending on the issues of the day.
[Exit Interview]
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
That’s our special guest today, Dr. Dominic Packer, professor of psychology at Lehigh University and co-author with Jay Van Bavel of The Power of Us. And, Rob, I do have to confess I did not know — or had possibly forgotten — that Canadian voters do not register with political parties. In fact, as in a lot of countries, Canadian citizens are automatically registered for voting.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Didn’t know that either, Jillian. And it turns out that the US is really the outlier here. Our research team confirmed not only Canada but most democracies don't have party-run primaries like we do, so voters don’t register with parties.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Those party-run primaries — which really determine the majority of seats in Congress — are right around the corner. And they may be even more polarizing in 2022 after a robust round of gerrymandering based on the 2020 census.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And let’s not forget a huge number of registered independent or unaffiliated Americans won’t even be able to vote in those party primaries. We covered that early on in our Season One episode, “The Forty Million Missing.” Here’s Jacqueline Salit, president of independentvoting.org, lamenting that party control — which is now seeping into general elections as well...
[Archival Audio- Jackie Salit]
Look, the parties have to make up their mind as to what they are. What kind of thing are they? Are they a private association that allows them certain protections, protections including the protection of the first amendment to exclude? And if you're that kind of organization, then fine; you're a private organization and the taxpayers should not foot the bill for your activities. You should not have the privilege of acting as a quasi-governmental institution.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Here in the US, it seems like we’re almost structurally inclined to polarize: two major parties, each holding their own primaries. And that encourages the “zero-sum-ness” and “us-vs-them-ness” of it all.
Robert Pease (co-host)
No doubt about that, Jillian. And yet we’ve become more polarized over the past few decades. That’s one of the big questions we have here at The Purple Principle that many guests have spoken to. How did we suddenly get even more polarized? Dr. Packer has some insight into that trend and some ideas on how to reverse it.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Including a favorite obsession of mine: how social media plays to our darkest tendencies…
[Back to Interview]
Dominic Packer
Yeah. I think this is a very important set of questions. We don't have perfect answers at this point, but we are learning a lot —and partly through the whistleblowers that are coming out of Facebook and potentially other social media companies. I mean, it's clear that what these companies are doing is maximizing engagement. In fact, they're pretty open about that. “That's what we try to do. We maximize engagement.” And in some way — if you think about what that really means — what that means is they're giving us what we want, right? And the way we've come to understand it is that in a polarized society it's like the social media platforms act as an accelerant. It's not that they're causing the polarization, per se; it was already there, but they exacerbate it. They sort of put it onto steroids so that we just have much more ready access to it. And then you can further inflame and polarize each other through these platforms. So Jay, my co-author, in his lab, has done really amazing work on this analyzing content. What kinds of content tend to spread, for example, on social media platforms? And there's a class of words, they call “moral-emotional words.” So these aren't just moral words, like “good” or “bad.” And they're not just emotional words, like “happy” or “sad.” They're words like “evil,” “disgust”. They've got this strong emotional component to them, but with a moralistic kick. Like “You're not just bad, you're evil.” It turns out these types of tweets or posts are much more likely to go viral, much more likely to spread among your own set of people who tend to be politically like-minded to you. If your tweet says something especially snarky about the other side, it’s particularly likely to be retweeted. And so the incentive structure here is both. On the one hand, for the social media companies, right? They want more of that stuff because it's getting engagement. But individual users have incentives to like — it feels good when your posts get attention and get retweeted. And so that increases the likelihood you're getting glued: these kinds of words and trying to trigger these sorts of reactions.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Yeah, well, it's a difficult thing to remedy. We have looked at the British effort, WT. Social, which has been out there about three years or so. From the time that we've spent on it, it seems like it has a very small user base. Chris Bail at the Duke Polarization Lab, whose work you mentioned, they have a prototype — I believe called DiscussIt — trying to create a less toxic forum. So what would you suggest to them?
Dominic Packer
This is the question of the day, and this is clearly going to have to be a multifaceted kind of response. So there is some work, for example, by David Rand and his colleagues. I think he's at MIT, where they look more at disinformation — which is a related part of the problem spread online. And they found that, for example, giving people accuracy prompts — so trying to sort of remind them that that seeking accurate information might be a good idea — actually does seem to cause people to then spread less disinformation or be less interested in disinformation online. There are positive examples online that are interesting, like Wikipedia. It's not a social media platform, per se, but it's this amazingly successful online thing that shouldn't work, right? It's largely or entirely volunteer. People spend vast amounts of energy and time creating this knowledge base for free — for other human beings to use for free. And this is a remarkable thing, but if you look at how they do it, right; it has a hierarchical structure. There are editors and super editors. They have rules that are really rigorously enforced. They have clear normative standards and they have strategies and processes for dealing with trolling and dealing with spam and dealing with all of the stuff that floods these platforms.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Yeah, that's interesting. I like the phrase you used there that social media is an accelerant and that part of the problem lies within, you know, the enemy is #withinus. And a great anecdote about that is the German towns that were affiliated with Adidas and Puma. And you write it wasn't about politics or religion. It wasn't about land, gold, or ideology; it was about shoes.
Dominic Packer
So it's not surprising that brothers fall out, right? Family dynamics drive people apart all the time. What's crazy about it is that the whole town ultimately got sucked into it. Because the brothers were rivals, the companies were rivals. And deeply bitter rivals, such that people who worked for one company no longer felt affiliated with — or even allowed to feel affiliated with — people who worked for the other company. It divided families. People from one side of the river were not really supposed to go and shop on the other side of the river. And we argue again it’s driven by these sort of basic group instincts that we have to affiliate with other people. But it simply shows how trivial a thing it could be. It seems absurd to divide up a town over shoes. And yet it happened and it had long-term consequences.
Robert Pease (co-host)
That is fascinating. But let's also talk about the Canadian identity and you have an interesting example. I had forgotten about this — that there's a famous Canadian rant, from about the year 2000 — that kind of went viral in its time — about being a proud Canadian and what that meant. And the Molson beer company got ahold of that and sold a lot more beer. So tell us about Canadian identity and that famous ad campaign...
Dominic Packer
Part of it was this famous ad called “The Rant” where it's a guy dressed like a very archetypical type of Canadian in plaid and things. And goes on a rant about what it means to be Canadian and it's largely contrasted against the American identity and the larger sort of big brother to the south.
[Archival Audio-Molson Coors Commercial “I Am Canadian”]
Dominic Packer
It's a common thing for the smaller country and among neighbors to be more insecure and uncertain of its identity than the larger and more powerful nation. And I think that dynamic certainly characterizes the American and Canadian identities. And it's not helped by the fact that you know, the Canadian media market is swamped by the American media market: that most things available on Canadian television, for example, are American TV shows and Hollywood and so on. So this is regarded as an issue for Canadian identity to the point that there are laws about Canadian content on TV and radio stations. So in any case, it's a bit of insecurity or sensitivity, I think for Canadians, who are we really, “Where do we fit in the grand scheme of things?” Everyone sort of treats us as just, you know, the 51st American state.
[Archival Audio-Molson Coors Commercial “I Am Canadian”]
Dominic Packer
And capitalizing on that, Molson, the Canadian beer company, developed an advertising campaign, which is brilliant. It was just called “I Am Canadian.”
[Archival Audio-Molson Coors Commercial “I Am Canadian”]
Dominic Packer
So this really appealed to people and sold them a lot of beer. And the “I Am Canadian” campaign in some ways still exists today, although that was from a long time ago. People — I think not necessarily consciously, but, you know — it might be more likely to drink Molson Canadian because it's got this link to the national identity, which of course beer companies always do, right? Budweiser in America — although it's not an American company anymore — strongly tries to link to “I am an American” as a reason to drink their beer.
Robert Pease (co-host)
You know, I think here in the US — because of our individualism — we think we’re less susceptible to that sort of thing. But you also mentioned that individualism can be a group mentality and some researchers have called Americans a “herd of independent minds.” So as a Canadian and as a researcher, tell us about American individualism as a group.
Dominic Packer
Yeah. This is a sort of counterintuitive thing. And I — that's a great phrase, “we're herd of independent minds,” which really captures the idea. So of the things we know about group identities is that the more important the group is to you, the more likely it is most of the time you'll conform to the norms of that group, right? So if you're a really committed, you know, employee at your company, what that means is you're going to work hard for them. And you're going to be pretty normative. Like you'll tend to dress like other employees and think like other employees and enact that identity, but norms can be about anything. And one of the things you can develop a norm about is individualism. You can develop a norm as a society — or indeed a company — that we are an individualistic place. But there's an ironic twist to that, which is then that once it's a norm, the most identified members of that group will then conform to that norm and be the most individualist. And so that's what some data suggests with regard to the American identity. Individualism is a very strong American value and a very strong American norm. And for that reason, what you find is that more identified Americans — the people who identify most as American — tend to embrace that norm the strongest, right? They tend to strive to be the most individualistic. So it's this ironic “herd of independent minds” thing whereby being independent you are actually conforming to a norm without really realizing it.
[Exit Interview]
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
That’s Dr. Dominic Packer, Lehigh University psychology professor and co-author, with Jay Van Bavel, of The Power of Us, a great new book summarizing the most important research on social identity and punctuating those insights with some fascinating real-world examples, like the German town divided by sneakers.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Or the “Oh, Canada: Land Mass United by Molson Beer.”
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Or the segment of seemingly individualistic Americans united by opposition to authority — government authority and possibly now scientific authority
Robert Pease (co-host)
Exactly. Jillian. I was just about to say this ties into what we heard from Lee McIntrye about science deniers in the US, such as Flat Earthers and anti-vaxxers, in Part 2 of this series: that science denial is not nearly as individualized as it seems.
[Archival Audio-Lee McIntyre]
I've since come to realize that all science denial is really organized; it's got a purpose and it's not really a mistake, it's a campaign. And as a campaign, it deserves some pushback, which is what I do.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
And in our roleplay as anti-vaxxers, Lee pushed back on our fictionalized objections to Covid vaccinations by questioning our faulty logic and reliance on fake experts. But what I really want to know is, how did Dominic Packer do in his roleplay with you as anti-vax cousin Rob?
Robert Pease (co-host)
Dominic did really well. In fact, I’m weirdly embarrassed to say I couldn’t even muster an effective anti-vax rebuttal, it was just that good.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
Well let’s hear it then; identity scholar Dominic Packer suggesting anti-vax cousin Rob get vaccinated before the big holiday gathering…
[Back to Interview]
Robert Pease (co-host)
Dom, I know why you're calling. I'm not getting vaccinated.
Dominic Packer
Well, Robert, I really wish you would. We want you at our family events and, you know, you're a really important part of our family. And we miss you and we care about you. And I know this is something you really feel strongly about, but we actually believe that this is harmful and you're putting yourself at risk and we wish you’d to at least reconsider. And if you'd like some more information, I’m happy to talk to you about it and talk about what I've learned and what I know, and maybe suggest some people you could speak to you.
[Exit Interview]
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
I see your point, Rob, or I see his point. Very effective.
Robert Pease (co-host)
No facts to rebut, no authority to rebel against. There’s humility and concern in his tone. And he takes away that whole group identity element by putting things on a much more heart-to-heart basis.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
It’s sort of like he heard the advice from Tania Israel on intellectual humility in Part One of this Holiday Survival Kit.
[Archival audio-Tania Israel]
Intellectual humility is really this ability to say, “Okay, I might hold very strong and even more extreme views on something. But I can still be respectful of and interested in hearing from people who hold a different perspective, that hearing that other perspective doesn't threaten me.”
Robert Pease (co-host)
And then he puts Tania’s perspective together with Lee McIntyre’s practical advice from Part 2.
[Archival Audio-Lee McIntyre]
...street epistemology, active listening, deprogramming people out of cults… It's all recommending the same thing: treat people like human beings and they will trust you and they will listen to you
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
We hope our listeners are not facing a lot of these sensitive conversations about vaccination this holiday season. But if you are, we really hope this 3-part Holiday Survival Kit was helpful in that respect and hopefully informative on some other fronts, too.
Robert Pease (co-host)
For now then, happy holidays from this indie sneaker agnostic.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
And from this Nike-wearing non-partisan. We sure hope 2022 proves way better than 2021.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Before 2022 and our own Season 3 kicks off in January, we have an upcoming episode that will highlight and discuss some of the most insightful guest comments from The Purple Principle Season 2. Such as from author and founder of the Institute for Political innovation, Katherine Gehl. That’s from our episode on the politics industry:
[Archival Audio-Katherine Gehl]
Oh my goodness, that is how it is in the politics industry. There's high barriers to entry. Oh, the customers have very little power, Oh, look at how much power the suppliers have.
Jillian Youngblood (co-host)
New York Times contributor Thomas Edsall from our Woking up to Backlash episode...
[Archival Audio-Thomas Edsall]
I think the Democrats remain a rational party and the Republican party has become an irrational party. If you want to preserve democracy — and democracy in a two party system that has a very hard time surviving in a polarized context — the burden then falls on the rational party to do something to lessen it
We hope you’ll join us for our 2021 wrap-up next episode. It’s a veritable holiday stocking stuffed with all things purple concerning hyperpartisanship and polarization. Until next time happy holidays and best wishes from the whole Purple Principle team: Alison Byrne, Production & Audience Engagement, Kevin A. Kline, Sr. Audio Engineer, Dom Scarlett and Grant Sharratt, Research Associates, Emma Trujillo, Audio Associate. Our musical identity composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production.