The Power of Us: A Conversation with Dominic Packer, PhD

Geoff Mitelman: Sacred Science, gleaning wisdom from science and religion. I’m Rabbi Geoff Mitelman; I’m the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses. And I’m sitting here with Professor Dominic Packer, who has written a fascinating book called The Power of Us. He is a professor of psychology at Lehigh University, and his research investigates how people’s identities affect conformity and dissent, racism and ageism, solidarity, health and leadership. And so, Professor Packer, Dom, it’s wonderful to be able to be talking with you here this afternoon.

Dominic Packer: Thanks for having me, Jeff. I’m really excited for our conversation.

Geoff Mitelman: It’s wonderful. You can see the book, called The Power of Us – it’s been getting some great press. There was an article that the two of you, your co-author, Jay van Bavel, wrote in the Atlantic, but would love to hear a little bit more: what is The Power of Us talking about? What are you trying to be able to achieve with this book?

Dominic Packer: Yeah, so Jay and I have worked together. We’ve both been social psychologists for about 15 years or so at this point, and all along over this period of time, what we’ve studied fundamentally is: how do people’s identities get shaped by the groups they belong to? And then once you’re in possession of such an identity, how does it affect everything, from very basic perceptual processes, including things like taste and smell (which can actually be quite surprising), through what you tend to believe, what beliefs you find interesting or attractive, what your goals and preferences are, what kind of decisions you make, and ultimately, large-scale sort of social phenomena: how identities allow for leadership, how identities can facilitate or inhibit social change, and the pursuit of greater justice in societies. So we’ve been interested in all these things, from sort of very low-level psychological processes, up through societal-level kind of things. But the fundamental issue is: how do our identities affect all of these outcomes?

And we called it The Power of Us, with sort of a dual notion in mind – a sort of duality of the power, which is that, on the one hand, these identities can exert a lot of influence on us, sometimes without us necessarily being terribly aware of it. And it’s useful to know that, in part because once you understand what the identity dynamics are, it allows you to then take control and exert power over yourself. “Do I really want to behave this way? Do I want to be part of this group? If I am part of this group and the group’s doing something I don’t like, how could I change the group? How can I use identity to lead others toward goals that I think would be more effective or moral or productive?”

So, power – both in the sense of “it impacts us a lot,” but it also, by understanding how identities work, gives us some power to make change in the world.

Geoff Mitelman: And when you talk about the word identities, I like that you use the word identities, plural, because I think, very often, we think of our identity as being unique and sometimes static, of – this is in all caps – “Who I Am,” when in fact, we have multiple different identities based on our role, based on who we are in relationship with – other people.

We’ve talked, actually, on the show, as a lot of Jews have talked about, of Martin Buber, of talking about how when you say “I,” you’re actually in relationship. “Am I in relationship with somebody else? Am I using that person?” And so, the question of “Who I Am” is not a static identity. It’s dynamic. So, I’m curious as to how you talk about multiple different identities and how that manifests itself in different situations.

Dominic Packer: Absolutely. The way you just described it is entirely consistent with how we think about it and what the scientific evidence we’ve collected would suggest. So, early in the book, we invite people to engage in something called the “20 statements” task or test. It’s a super-simple exercise, takes about five minutes, and it basically asks you to simply complete the phrase “I am” 20 times.

And what’s interesting about this is, as you start doing it, is how easy it is, at least for most people. It’s not very difficult to come up with 20 things that you consider to be self-defining. And then when you look down your list, you’ll discover that some are very much individual, right? So, it’s “me,” as differentiated from other people. These are often things like our personality traits, like, and “I think I’m a really extroverted person,” or “I’m really shy.” Or it could be a skill: “I think I’m very intelligent,” or “I’m a great piano player.” Other things on that list are almost always relational identities, like you were saying yourself, in relation to other important people, usually in your lives. So these could be, “I’m a father or son,” “I’m a sister or brother”, but also potentially roles. For example, I’m a professor, and I possess that role in relation to other students or to students.

But the things we’re particularly interested in, and we talk the most about in the book, are a third type of identity on most people’s lists, which are social identities or collective identities, identities founded and grounded in the groups that we belong to. And so, these can include – and they’re different for different people, but they include race or ethnicity, your gender identity. They could include your professional identity, your religious identity, your citizenship or national identity. All of these are large-scale groups that we’re a part of. And when they become a part of ourselves, when it becomes a part of who you think you are, that actually has some pretty profound impacts, right? Now it’s not just “a group I happen to belong to, but it’s not very important to me because it’s attached to myself.” All of the sort of self-interested kind of motivations – that people have with regard to their own individual self – start getting applied to those groups as well.

Geoff Mitelman: And when we think about, particularly, minority cultures, and it’s an exercise that I did a lot when I was in the pulpit world – I would work with families as their kids were becoming bar and bat mitzvah, and think about when do they feel most connected to their Jewish identity? And what was fascinating was in Westchester County, which was, relatively, a pretty Jewish group, a pretty Jewish population, some felt most Jewish when they were with other Jews doing Jewish things, and that highlighted that, and sometimes they felt most Jewish at Christmas time or at Easter time, when they were differentiated – they were different from other people.

So I’m wondering: What do we find about these questions of identity, particularly whether that’s a minority culture, a minority race, a minority group identity? And there are a variety of different ways in which that may happen, [like] gender identity. When do we find people connecting most closely with a minority identity? When you’re trying to respond to a majority culture.

Dominic Packer: I think that’s a great point, and I think the two examples you give are perfect, because sometimes our identities are made salient to us and sort of really come into focus because you’re actively engaged in identity related activities. You’re engaged in the rituals of that identity, or celebrating a tradition. It’ll really be on your mind.

But oftentimes, identities actually come into focus not in the –  they come in those moments, but in other moments as well, which is when it differentiates you or distinguishes you from most other people in the situation. This is true for individual identities. So, there’s some classic work, I think, from the 1950s, showing that schoolchildren, if you ask them about who they are or what they are, they tend to name things that differentiate them from other students in their class, right? So, for me, I have sort of red hair. And so, as a child, I would have identified as a redhead, but all the kids with blonde or brown hair, because it was not uncommon, probably were less likely to mention their hair color. It’s something that identified them.

But the same is true for our collective identities. Things that differentiate us from the broader population as a whole make us stand out, make us feel unique, are often very salient to us. And often, this is actually a really good thing, or psychologically, a really almost pleasurable kind of thing. There’s something we talk about in the book. We talk about motivations. Why do people want to belong to groups? What is it about groups that resonate with us and attract us to them? And one of the things that attracts us to particular kinds of groups is something called “optimal distinctiveness.”

And the idea here, and I think this applies particularly to minority groups, is the idea, is that as humans, we have these two needs that are a little bit in competition with each other. One is a need to belong. Fundamentally, we are a deeply social species. We really desire and crave social connection to others. And obviously, belonging to groups is one way to satisfy that need. But at the same time, we also have a pretty strong need for autonomy. We want to feel like we are autonomous. We are individuals. We are unique. We’re not just the same as everybody else. “I am a distinctive person, and I can exert my own agency in the world.” That’s also really important to us. And if you think about it, those two are kind of in competition with each other, right? Like, “I really want to fit in, but I also want to be different.”

And one way you can sort of meet those two needs at the same time is by achieving what’s called optimal distinctiveness, where you are distinct, but you also fit in at the same time. And often this is achieved in groups that have really strong, unique identities. So the group as a whole is perhaps a minority group, where there’s a lot of cohesion, where members really feel like they fit in, they’re accepted, they’re connected. And so it’s satisfying those needs, but because they’re different from the rest of society and they have their own unique traditions and beliefs and so on, it gives that sense of uniqueness as a group, and that can be a really validating and really sort of psychologically satisfying kind of identity to hold.

Geoff Mitelman: That’s interesting, because thinking about, there was a Pew report about Jewish identity, and there are all sorts of different markers of how people were observant, and what rituals they did or didn’t do. But it was a question of “How proud are you of being Jewish?” And something like 90-something percent said, “I’m proud to be Jewish.” I think for a lot of minority cultures, whatever that minority culture is, they probably would say, “I am very proud to be a part of this minority culture because of this optimal distinctiveness.” It’s really fascinating and we can see that in a variety of different areas as well.

Dominic Packer: Absolutely – so it tends to be true that a majority group in a society or in a particular context tends to be much less aware of that particular social identity than minority group members. In that same context, you can think about it with race. And at least historically in the United States, for example, African-Americans or Black Americans were much more identified with their racial group than were white Americans. Or, I teach at a university with a large engineering school, which is male-dominated. The male students in the engineering school don’t necessarily think about their gender all that much; the female students who are a minority absolutely think about their gender all the time. It’s hyper-salient how they might be being treated differently because it stands out against the crowd.

Geoff Mitelman: And this is something that we’ve been thinking about in America for decades, if not centuries, but it’s really come to the forefront over the last couple of years even more so – of these questions of recognizing our privilege. Both you and I are white males, not as aware of these different kinds of things. So, when I’m acting or doing something in the Jewish community, I’m very aware of that. But when I’m walking down the street, people see that I’m a white man, and I’m not as aware of that.

What are some of the ways in which people who are part of a majority culture (however that’s defined), become more aware of the privilege and become able to think about: “Wait a second – other people are grappling with this in a different kind of way. What’s obvious to that person, that I may be blind to”? How can we become a little bit more open and aware of these kinds of questions?

Dominic Packer: It’s a great, really fundamentally important question. I think a lot of it occurs, actually, through processes of consciousness-raising. That is, people who see that there are disparities, see that there are group-based distinctions that are unfair or unjust, make them more obvious – like, bring them to the fore, provide the evidence for them, talk about them. And it is indeed the case that, you know, you could have large segments of a population who, just because of the lives they’ve lived, don’t realize that these disparities exist.

I think recently we’re seeing a lot of social-change kind of movements arising in part because of, say, something like social media. And it’s not just that. We can communicate more quickly or easily with each other, or can get each other riled up with angry tweets. It’s also turned out to be a consciousness-raising tool.

So, think about something like the #MeToo movement. So the #MeToo movement begins as a hashtag on Twitter with women who’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted, telling their story and putting the hashtag. And what that did was change something that, for long periods of history, was a very stigmatizing, very individually-experienced thing where people felt very alone and unable to talk to other people about what had happened to them. It made it suddenly less stigmatized, and it also made it wildly obvious to everybody who was paying attention that this sort of behavior, these experiences of harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender were astonishingly frequent. It was happening all the time to millions of women. Suddenly, when you see this, many people, I think, realize something they hadn’t seen before, which was: yes, they knew harassment was out there. They knew there was discrimination. But the sheer prevalence of it, I think, shocked many people into realizing, “this is a much larger and more significant social problem than I had realized.” So, I think consciousness-raising is a part of it, coupled with efforts to help people want to do something about it. You both need to see a problem and have a motivation to think “That’s a problem I want to fix.”

Geoff Mitelman: Right – not just “people know.” There’s that Seinfeld meme. “Oh, that’s a shame, right? You don’t want to. That’s too bad.” You need to be able to act on that, right?

Dominic Packer: To feel empathy and to feel – I think one of the ways we would talk about it, in the context of our book, is that you shift your goals a little bit from simply being self-interested or interested in the outcomes of “my group,” to become concerned for the outcomes of other groups, to see that those outcomes are important, and that you place value on them, and you’re therefore willing to support the career trajectories or the interests or the concerns of members of groups that you don’t necessarily, as an individual, belong to.

Geoff Mitelman: I’m grappling and struggling a little bit with a question that you’re raising, which is that, from what I understand, there’s a lot of research that people engender more compassion towards other when they find points of connection and similarity. So, looking at minority cultures, or where there’s been oppression, and being able to both be aware and to be able to act on it, sometimes it’s saying, “I see your common humanity. I see this element in common with us.” And that also, there’s a danger of that, because it’s saying, like, “Oh, I know how you’re feeling. I know what you’re dealing with,” when I have no idea what you’re actually dealing with. And that’s taking over that space, as opposed to letting the minority culture, whoever that happens to be, be able to voice themselves and make sure that their voice is heard. How do we navigate those who currently have power and be able to use that and use that effectively and not misuse that power?

Dominic Packer: Again, a great, really important question, and I’m not sure I have great answers for any of them, except to say, recognizing that that’s an issue is a really important step. So, the idea of common humanity, I think, can be a really powerful reason or instigator of empathy, of compassion, of wanting to help. And it’s sort of consistent with this idea that we all have multiple identities, but one identity we can hold in mind is that we’re human beings, right? That we are members of a global species, and we have a connection to everybody around the world. And if you feel that that gives you, then, more concern for those people’s interests, more concern for their outcomes, more empathy for their plight – but at the same time, as they’re saying people in power, or may unthinkingly, sort of, then just say, “Okay, we’re all the same, so I’ll take charge, and I’ll sort out all your problems.”

And we know that’s not a recipe for success – that those identities that minority groups or disenfranchised groups possess really matter to them. They don’t want them to be sort of wiped out and [have it just be] “We’re all the same,” right? Those identities still exist for those people, and they’re still important to those people.

So, there’s work, for example, on majority and minority group relations in the context of, say, immigration to countries. And if you look at the kind of immigration policies that people would like to see instituted in their nations, what we tend to see is that members of the majority group, whatever it happens to be, tend to prefer an assimilationist kind of policy. That is, “We want everyone to join the melting pot.” Like, “Once you emigrate here, we should all fundamentally become the same.” Whereas, members of minority groups that have emigrated to the nation, or indigenous peoples – they don’t want the melting pot. They want to be accepted as Americans or full citizens in the society, but they also want to retain the identities they brought with them that really matter to them, that differentiate them from the society. And it’s always a matter of, I think, trying to balance both of those things. And when it comes to something like allyship, trying to help members of disenfranchised groups advance their interests or overcome systemic disparities or discrimination in society, I think it is important for the members of more dominant groups to take a step back every once in a while and say, “I’m here to support, but I can’t speak for that group because I’m not of that group. And I don’t really understand.” As much as I might empathize, I don’t really understand what it’s like, and it’s important for me to listen every once in a while. If a course of action is suggested by that group, then I should consider taking that course of action, even if it’s not what I would have thought to do myself.

Geoff Mitelman: And I think, so many different kinds of identities – and when you were talking about the 20 “I am” statements, some of these are not chosen for us, right? Some of our identity is – that’s just who we are. I mean, we could change a little bit of our hair color or things like that, but there are some elements of, like, “this is who I am and it cannot be changed.”

And then there are some which are, [that] we’ve chosen, right? Like your identity as a professor, my identity as a rabbi. That’s something [where] we could have taken a whole different career trajectory and our identity would be different. And so, I think some of that, and I’m curious as to how many you see of kind of noun parts of the identity, of things that are fixed, versus what are the verb elements of the identity, of “here’s who I am, and this may change down the road.”

Dominic Packer: Also a fantastic question. It’d be hard for me to put a number on either, but most people – you’re right – have both. I think what varies between people is the importance of different identities. So, for the identities that are not self-chosen, you tend to be born into a particular cultural group or potentially a religious affiliation. Back in the old days, people were born into professions, right? You might be born the son of a blacksmith, and you’re going to be a blacksmith. It’s not true today, but although you belong to those groups, you are in fact a member of those groups. It doesn’t mean you identify strongly with those groups.

And what you find is variability – so for some people, that identity is a very important identity to them. For other people, that membership may actually be so unimportant, we wouldn’t call it an identity. It’s just you’re in the social category, and when we study these things. For that reason, we often measure levels of identification if we want to understand “How do people act in terms of identity?” We’re often interested in comparing the people who are strongly identified with that particular group they’re part of, in comparison to people also in the group, but for whom it’s not such an important identity.

And I think the same is also true even for chosen identities. So, you can think about professional identities, but I suspect professors and rabbis tend to be pretty invested in their occupations, in part because, like other groups, the harder it is to gain entry – like the more education you need, for example – the harder you have to work to get there, the more invested you tend to be once you arrive. That’s true of all sorts of groups, but even within any profession, there’ll be people for whom it’s really this sort of overriding, central part of who they are, all-consuming – which is not necessarily healthy. And for other people, it’s just a job. “I do my nine-to-five, and I go home at the end of the day, and I don’t think about it at all.” And there’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily. But you’re certainly less invested in it as an identity, as opposed to the person for whom it’s, like, on their mind 24/7.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, we were talking, before we went live, about political polarization, which has  been a conversation also for decades, but just each year.

Dominic Packer:  – especially now.

Geoff Mitelman:  But political identities, it used to be, this is “I agree with these particular policies, and I like this particular candidate, and now it is, “I am a Democrat”” or “I am a Republican,” or at least “I self-identify.” And that seems to be reinforcing and self-reinforcing when we see different policies. And I fall into this category too. I see some sort of complicated political policy that I have no idea or very minimal idea of all the nuances of this, but I need to vote on it. So I sort of look and see, “Okay, is my political party voting for this or not? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” And, on a positive, the identity actually can give you a cue, of being able to say, “Because people like me tend to vote like this or tend to agree with this…” That’s a helpful conversation.

So, how do we deal with these kinds of questions, where the identity is valuable – but I think it’s become too much of the identity right now – of our political perspectives?

Dominic Packer: Yeah, I think your intuition is right, that we’re seeing political identities, which used to just be one of many identities people might possess. And for some people, [ones that are] not even really that important at all, have become central identities for large numbers of people and in some cases, sort of an overriding identity, that other identities sort of get folded into it in ways that aren’t necessarily very healthy for them or society.

Sometimes when political scientists talk about polarization, they describe it as a flattening of identities, which is actually a description I love – this sort of this idea that in a non-polarized society, you’ve got people with all sorts of identities, and they’re cross-cutting, right? Simply because, you know, someone’s a Democrat or Republican, you don’t necessarily know what their religious beliefs might be, or what kind of occupation they’re likely to hold, or where they’re likely to live, or even, say, their policy preferences on a whole bunch of things. As societies polarize, it’s like it all gets flattened into one dimension of “left to right.”

So it’s that all your other identities have to sort of become secondary to the political identity. And the political identity is telling you now where you should live, and what your occupation should be, and who your friends can be, and who you should date. And I think what we’re seeing, in American society, but, indeed, societies around the world, is some of that flattening going on. And I like to say I don’t think it’s healthy, but I also think it’s boring. Life should be about more than politics. Politics matter – they do. But there is a richness to life beyond your policy preferences and who you vote for. And I think it’s sad when that’s all we argue about all the time.

Geoff Mitelman: And I think we were talking beforehand, also, that one of the problems that COVID has created is that we’re not interacting with people. One of my identities is [that] I’m a Little League coach, right? So I talk at the stands, and I talk with the other coaches, and catch up there, at synagogues, or PTA meetings, or town boards (although town boards now have become quite politicized as well). But there are different ways in which there are conversations where you get to know that other person in as much of their fullness as you’re able to see.

But there’s become this self-sorting, I think, politically and geographically. And COVID has prevented us from being able to actually have those conversations when we talked with different rabbis and pastors. What they miss is in Judaism, the oneg, where you eat afterwards, or the kiddush or the coffee hour, where you just say, “Hey, how’s your work going? Is your mother feeling better?” You get to know these people so much more deeply through kind of the silly little interactions.

Dominic Packer: Absolutely. I think if you actually interact with other human beings as people, as individuals, you – first of all, after a while at least – aren’t interacting as representatives of your groups, right? You’re both two individuals enjoying each other’s company, or maybe even not enjoying each other’s company, but you’re two individuals. You’re not there as a representative of your political viewpoint, right?

And the other thing is that you learn this person has multiple selves, multiple identities, that their politics is just one piece of who they are, and there are lots of other interesting things about them, and they learn that about you, and you might even find you actually have a whole bunch of identities in common. Right? Like, we’re both passionate about Little League soccer, or we’re both passionate about our American identity, or whatever it might be that you have in common, despite your differences.

And I think you’re right. These processes have been happening for a long time, especially the segregation geographically. If you look at where people live, the New York Times had an interactive thing about eight months ago or so where you could punch in your zip code and it would show you what proportion of the people living around you were of your own political persuasion versus the other. And what you find in many, many locations is pretty polarized – or I should say segregated – groups, where most people don’t live around anyone, or at least many people with different political viewpoints. And then COVID has just made that worse, because even within these neighborhoods, people aren’t even interacting with each other in that context. It’s become very sort of a lonely time, and an insular time.

Geoff Mitelman: One of the other things that I would love to explore a little bit is this question of individual identity and autonomy. And one of the things I think about when I was a pulpit rabbi, and all these 13-year-olds had to give a d’var torah,  had to be able to link the Torah portion to their life. And the number of times when it was a story of, “my friends were going to do x or y or z, and I did this, and I’m very proud of [it], and here’s who I am.” And I think there’s an American perception of “I’m going to do it on my own,” and a rugged individualism. And that’s not who we are as human beings. That’s not how we evolved on the African savannah, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. And I think the WEIRD – Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democracies – that’s more of an anomaly. That actually being able to say “I’m part of this community,” that’s actually more of a normal perspective in other cultures. I know in Judaism – in Asian and African cultures as well – that’s where that’s often presented. So how do we find the value of going with the crowd, of being part of that community, of pushing back against “No, I am going to go by myself”? Because we hear that all the time.

Dominic Packer: There are lots of things I could say about that. I think about this all the time. So one thing I might note is that one of the reasons those young people might tell those particular stories is actually because they stand out. It’s not like they’re doing that all the time, right? The time when you did challenge your social group – whether it was your peers, your friends, or the company you work for, whatever it might be – you tend to remember it, because it was maybe a difficult decision, and maybe you got some social sanctions for it – like, there were consequences. You lost a friend, or they were angry with you for a while, or you were laughed at, right? And they’re often, for that reason, the things we’re proud of, because what often motivates it was principle, right? It’s “a time I stood on principle and I did what I thought was right,” even though other people didn’t. But the fact we remember them suggests that’s not super-common.

And even in our societies – as individualistic societies, we like to think of ourselves as doing it all the time, but I’m not sure we do. And I think the thing about conformity, or fitting in and going along with what others are doing, is that it often is a very sensible thing to do. And we talk a lot about this in the book – that life is a complicated thing, and it makes a lot of sense, under many circumstances, to do what your fellow group members are doing and thinking, and to listen to them. One is because we really want to fit in, and groups care a lot about their norms, and for good reason, right? Groups having norms and rituals and traditions and the way we do things allows them to coordinate their behavior, allows you to predict what other group members are going to do. It’s very functional for groups to have clear norms. And so if you want to fit into the group, that’s what you tend to comply with – those norms. That’s how you get accepted.

And that’s a good thing, collectively, at least. But even on an individual level, it’s often a very sensible thing to do, because life is so complicated, right? Most of us at most, develop one or two areas of expertise, things we could really figure out on our own. Most things we have no idea how to figure out on our own. How do I know the earth is round? I don’t really know. The earth is just round. I read in a book, teachers told me, lots of other people seem to believe it. I haven’t circumnavigated the globe. It makes a lot of sense to rely on others for information about all kinds of things.

And we do this all the time, and we tend, as it turns out, to rely the most on the people who are part of our own groups. And this is normally a very sensible thing to do. I think the things we remember, the times we remember standing out, are the times when it didn’t make sense to us, right, where the group just seemed wrong, like factually wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong. And what’s interesting – and this is some of the research I’ve done over the years – is what we find, if you look at who is the most conformist in a group – [it] tends to go along with group norms the most – and you look at who’s the most likely to dissent in a group, who’s most likely to stand up and challenge the group, say, “Wait, I think this is wrong, we shouldn’t do this,” or, “I refuse” – it’s often the same people. It’s often the same people are the most conformist and the most likely to dissent.

And the common denominator, the thing that underlies both, is they’re the identified group members. And if you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. Identified group members care a lot for the group. They really want to belong to the group. They want to fit into that group. It’s a major, important social connection for them. So for that reason, they tend to go along with group norms most of the time, because they agree with those norms. They think they’re good. But if they come to disagree for some reason – like, if you come to believe that what my group is doing is very problematic – then it’s because you care. You want to do something about it, right? You don’t want to just abandon the group and say, “Okay, I refuse to have anything to do with you anymore.” You say, “I want to change the group. I want to try to stop us from making this terrible error,” or “I want us to avoid this moral quandary we’re falling into,” or “I want us to be more productive,” right? And it’s that level of identification that’s actually motivating people to articulate dissenting views.

And so for your young people, when they’re saying they remember these moments of pride, it probably, at least a lot of time, is occurring in a context where the group was actually a valued group. Like, “these are my friends, and it was really hard to stand up to them. And the reason I’m proud of it is because it was not just motivated because I wanted to be different from them. It was motivated because I cared about us”. Right? I cared about this collection of you.

Geoff Mitelman: Now, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about the way that the conversations, particularly, I’m thinking about Israel and the Jewish community, and thinking about Israel, because it has become very complicated in the Jewish world to talk about Israel, because there’s both the question of “This is a group of people that I feel connected to,” and for some people, they don’t feel connected, right? So some of it is, why are they no longer connected to Israel? That’s one question. One is, “this is a group of people that I feel associated with.” Some of it is, “how do I challenge the norms and when they’re acting unethically? And what happens when that’s perceived as being disloyal to the group?” How much of it is that? “No, I’m loyal to my Jewish values.” And it’s also very hard because there’s also the outside world that’s looking in as well.

It sounds like there are so many different layers here. There’s the individual that’s also the part of the synagogue, that’s also part of the larger Jewish people, that’s part of the wider American or world view. And I think what’s forgotten is that when people are talking about it, it means that they care about it. It means that there’s something that they are invested in. And it’s when they check out that becomes the problem. Or at least that becomes the red flag.

Dominic Packer: To me, that makes total sense. And that’s very consistent with what we argue in the book – that the next time you encounter someone who’s vehemently disagreeing with you, dissenting from a group norm, you should not jump to the immediate conclusion that they have ill intent, that they’re out to harm the group or they’re being destructive. Most likely, they’re well-intentioned. Right. They’re trying to help in the way they see makes sense. Doesn’t mean you have to agree with them – they may be completely off the wall. You might conclude, like, “This is nonsense, but don’t assume they’re ill motivated.”

And what research on dissent suggests (and this is actually, I think, a really important and underappreciated point in all kinds of contexts, whether it’s our religious communities, but also the companies we work for), dissent is valuable, not necessarily because it gets everyone to agree with the dissenter, but it turns out the presence of a dissenter makes everyone else more creative, makes them more likely to think divergently, and maybe come to completely different views than the dissenting opinion. But still, that infusion of divergent thinking is often really productive, or often very useful for a group. Right?

So there are these classic studies which you probably know about, the Solomon ash conformity studies, where students were basically shown very simple visual stimuli. “Which of these three lines matches this other line?” And everyone in the group ahead of them starts to give the wrong answers. And even though it’s really obvious what the right answer is, about a third of the time, these participants – this in the 1950s – went along with the crowd and gave the wrong answer. And this, as a famous finding, is often sort of invoked to say “Look how conformist everyone is. This is really problematic.”

But there’s a version of that experiment that people don’t talk about enough. There’s one of these versions where everyone else responds before you, the participant, and they all give the wrong answer. But one person ahead of you dissents from that opinion, but they don’t give the right answer. They give the other wrong answer. And what’s fascinating about what happens there is that conformity completely disappears, and the real participants give the right answer. And it’s like the presence of a dissenter, even though they were wrong, freed everybody from this pressure to conform. Right. It freed the participants to be like, “Okay, I know what the right answer is. I’m going to say it, and speak my mind, even though no one else has said this before.”

And I think in our real-life group context, this is a really important thing to remember, that dissent is usually well-intentioned. And even when you disagree with it, it can actually be a good thing for your group, because it infuses new ideas or at least forces you to rethink, like, “What are we really up to?”

Geoff Mitelman: And I think it’s important to also think about the different elements of the group that we’re a part of. If you really push out a particular political or religious perspective that you strongly disagree with, but it’s also not part of your group that’s actually, I think, probably going to create more dissent and more polarization and more, like, that person is evil, as opposed to trying to think through of how are they the hero of their own story? Because nobody ever says, “I am going to do something that is going to hurt myself and my community and my people.” There may be some people who do that, but generally most people are saying, “I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m trying to present the arguments for the people who are going to listen to me.”

And I think some of that is being able to say, well, not just, “Boy, that person is awful. How could they say something so horrible?” But even being able to say, “Well, what’s prompting them? Who is their audience? Why are they saying this?” I think that’s a very hard thing for us to be able to do as human beings.

Dominic Packer: Yeah. It requires putting yourself in their shoes, really trying to think through “Where are they coming from?” And sometimes you may come to the conclusion that they are ill-intended. Because there are trolls out there, especially if we’re talking about online environments – there’s some bad behavior, and it’s designed to have negative consequences. But often the people, especially if they’re people that are part of our community and we know them and we care about them, it’s worth giving them the benefit of the doubt.

And one way I think about this is: I think we’re very quick, or groups can be very quick, to want to punish people who deviate. And sometimes that might be appropriate to reinforce a norm, but it might be more effective, in many cases, to think about it more as a sort of rehabilitative kind of process, rather than being punitive, like, “I want to harm you or cause you negative consequences because of this thing you’ve done.” The question might be better thought of as, “How can we bring you back? How can we reintegrate you into this community that you seem to find really important, and we value you, and what’s it going to take?”

And it may take some significant change for that to work, but it’s different than just saying, “I want to punish.” But we’re seeing, especially, again, in online environments, this very quick propensity to want to punish anyone who says the wrong thing or seems to think in a different way.

Geoff Mitelman: You know, when you use the word “return” – and I’m thinking about in Judaism, this idea of Teshuva, which comes up on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur –  that usually is translated as “repentance.” But what it really means is a return of the ways in which we have made mistakes. And actually, there’s been lots of conversations in the Reform Jewish world that I’m part of, because there have been some pretty significant sexual ethics violations in multiple different organizations. And they’re saying there need to be ways of the people who have – the word I’ll use is “sinned,” although that has a great Christian connotation. But what is going to be the process by which they are going to make restitution for those that they’ve harmed? How do they reflect on who they are and what is going to be the Teshuva process? And so, with a focus on the victims and being able to say, “What are the different actions and what are the different consequences, and how do we think about this in a wider institutional way as opposed to case-by-case?”

And so when you said, “how do we return,” and saying, there may be some very significant actions here to be able to do this.

Dominic Packer: That’s really interesting. It’s a restorative-justice kind of approach that thinks of justice not just about punishing wrongdoing, although that may be an important part of it, but also thinking about how do we help victims and also how do we restore our communities. Right. Because wrongdoing and injustices have harmed entire – they harm the entire community. They harm all of us at some level.

Geoff Mitelman: As I’m seeing, knowing your book of The Power of Us, there’s almost always a larger system that facilitates the bad behavior or condones the bad behavior. So it’s not just the individual, but “Okay, what are the larger systemic ways in which the institution, the company, the synagogue, whatever it is, how can they leverage the power of all of the different stakeholders to be able to create a better and more just and safer kind of space?”

Dominic Packer: That’s right.

Geoff Mitelman: Before we were talking in the very beginning – this is totally unrelated to what we were talking about. But you were mentioning about questions of identity and food, and I’m thinking about different things, of kashrut, of keeping kosher, how that creates a level of identity. And food is so integral – of different cultural markers. But I would love to know, what was it that you were exploring and talking about? Because I’m so fascinated by this link between identity and food and what you were exploring.

Dominic Packer: Yeah, I love talking about identity, but I also love food. So it’s always nice to bring the two together. And I think when we start thinking about food, especially foods that matter to us, we discover they’re often attached to our identities. Many of the things that are most meaningful that we eat are part of – they could be part of religious traditions, or they’re part of a national heritage, or they’re somehow connected to our identity in really interesting ways. They can be sort of ritualized. They can be markers of who’s “in” and who’s “out.”

There has been work done on the role that etiquette plays. And there’s a lot of etiquette around eating: which is the appropriate utensil to use? In what order? And how those can be used within groups as status differentiators? It’s higher status people who know how to do it properly, and they often change the etiquette rules. As lower status people learn how to do it, then the higher-status people change the rules on them. There are really fascinating dynamics that play out, but one of the things we talk about it in the book, and we’ve done research on, is going back to something I said at the very beginning: identities can affect low-level, perceptual kind of processes, including how we see the world visually, but even things like taste and smell, which are obviously deeply connected to food.

And so my co-author Jay, in particular, has done work on this over the years, where participants are reminded of a particular identity that’s connected to food or not, and then they’re put in a situation where they actually engage with this food. So, for example, one of the studies they did was in the ByWard market in Ottawa in Canada, which is a famous market, and there are lots of food stalls around. And they set up a taste test for passersby. And the two things they could taste were honey and maple syrup. And both of these are sweet; they’re sticky, they’re very similar kinds of substances. In some ways, they look similar – color – but only maple syrup is connected to Canadian identity, and honey isn’t particularly.

And before they did the taste test, they had participants fill out a questionnaire. And for half of these questionnaires, all the questions were about their [identity]. So, you know, “What’s your citizenship? What do you like about Canada? What makes Canada unique?”

And the other half of the participants answered different sorts of questions, having nothing to do with being Canadian. They then do the taste test, and they rated their preference. And what they found was, for the people who were not thinking about their Canadianness, they liked the honey and the maple syrup equally. But for the people who’d been reminded beforehand that they were Canadian, they preferred the maple syrup. Suddenly, the syrup they rated as tastier and more enjoyable, and they liked it better.

It’s the same thing. They were the same people fundamentally, but their identity had shifted. And then in a study that I think is maybe even more sort of provocative, Jay collaborated with someone in Switzerland who is a smell researcher, and what they do for their research is waft smells off people’s nostrils and ask them, among other things, to rate the intensity of those smells. And it being Switzerland, one of the smells was chocolate. And again, half the participants were reminded they were Swiss, and half were not reminded they were Swiss. They were asked to report the intensity of various scents. And the people who had been thinking about themselves as Swiss experienced the scent of chocolate more intensely than the people who hadn’t been.

It’s probably not important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a data point, or these are data points that suggest that these identities we hold don’t just affect our political beliefs and whether we like our neighbor or not, depending on their political beliefs, and they don’t just affect who we vote for. All of those are really important things, but they also affect these really low level, sort of physiological kinds of things, like the intensity of a taste or the enjoyability of a scent. And just speaks to the power – again, coming back to The Power of Us, to the power of these identities.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, in Judaism, food is so integral, and we often tell the story you’re talking about, that Passover is so integral with so many different smells and tastes, of horseradish and charoset or matzah – but also on Rosh Hashanah, dipping apples and honey or eating latkes – that there are pieces where it, first of all, connects to family history. But ideally, Judaism and religion is supposed to create an impetus for us. Right? So to be able to say “this is how we’re supposed to act” – and so, in a lot of ways, Passover, which is coming up not too far away, which is a little scary for the Jewish community right now, but eating and getting ready for Pesach for those couple of weeks leading up, that’s also supposed to remind us of standing up for the oppressed and being able to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt. So when that smell from the kitchen wafts up, it’s supposed to impel us to act in a certain kind of [way].

Dominic Packer: Right, right. Very evocative. Can I tell one more food anecdote?

Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely.

Dominic Packer: So this is actually something I learned from reading a book by Adam Gopnik. I think the book is called The Table Comes First. He wrote a book about food, and he talks about the phrase e pluribus unum, which, I don’t know if it’s the official motto of the United States, but it’s often on American coins and things. E pluribus unum, “one out of many,” or “out of many, one.” Apparently, the very first use of that phrase was actually in an ancient recipe for pesto – “Out of many, one.” And he describes how it’s actually a perfect motto for the United States or for any multicultural, pluralist society that strives to become one – to be unified, but that is composed of many. And if you actually think about pesto, the perfect pesto is not all mush, right? It hasn’t been ground to the point where everything is truly assimilated. The perfect pesto is one where the ingredients actually remain somewhat independent of one another, that they work together perfectly – so you can still experience the crunch of the pine nuts, and the basil leaves are still somewhat separate from the parmesan. And then it’s got this bath of olive oil around it.

And I love that anecdote because it links this ancient phrase that’s now a big part of the American national identity to food in a way that’s actually a perfect sort of emblem of the sort of society we, I think, are often striving to be.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, that’s a wonderful way to close, because your book and what our conversation was really about, as your book is called, The Power of Us, of how do we come together in all of our different identities, all the different multiple-faceted elements of our identities that are changing, that are always in relationship with other people – that there can be a level of unity and togetherness, that aiming to be able to create a more perfect union in America or in Judaism, of saying, repairing the world with Tikkun Olam, of being able to create a more just world here. And so I want to thank you both for your time this afternoon, and for the book that I highly recommend that people can get called The Power of Us. And people can follow you on Twitter. You’re @dominic_packer, underscore, correct?

Dominic Packer: Underscore. Yeah. Someone else took just Dominic Packer, so it’s got an underscore at the. Yeah. And we have a book website where it links to a newsletter and all sorts of other information. It’s powerofus.online.

Geoff Mitelman: And there’s also a Twitter handle also of the book as well, for people to be able to find.

Dominic Packer: We’re everywhere.

Geoff Mitelman: We’re everywhere. Wherever books are sold, you should be able to get it. But Dom, thank you so much for the wonderful insights and the terrific conversation today.

Dominic Packer: Thanks so much for having us. A lot of fun. Really enjoyed it.

Geoff Mitelman: So our conversation next week, which is going to be back on Tuesdays at 02:00 p.m.. Eastern, we’re going to be speaking with Dr. David Zvi Kalman, who is at the Shalom Hartman Institute, who has done a lot of work about technology and Jewish law, everything from lab grown meat to face identification and the ethics surrounding that. And he is a wonderful, wonderful thinker. We’re going to be talking with him next week. You can follow me, I’m on Twitter at RabbiMitelman Or, you can follow us on @Sinaiandsynapses at all of the different social media channels that we will have. But we thank you for taking the time with us this afternoon. And Dom, we hope you have a wonderful rest of your afternoon. And thank you all for joining us.