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The Group Mind: The Pervasive Influence of Social Identity on Cognition

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New Frontiers in Social Neuroscience

Part of the book series: Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences ((NEUROSCIENCE,volume 21))

Abstract

Humans evolved in social groups and are adapted for group living. In this chapter, we review recent behavioral, physiological, and neuroscience research that provides the psychological and neural architecture for collectively shared representations of the world – the “group mind.” We describe how collective identities structure a wide range of human cognitive processes, from rapid evaluation and face memory to mental state attribution and representations of physical distance. This research underscores how psychological and neural processes underlying human cognition are context-dependent, dynamic, and flexibly shaped by motivational states, rather than inevitable, reflexive, and fixed.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Lisa Kaggen and members of the NYU Social Perception and Evaluation Lab (@vanbavellab) for their thoughtful comments on various stages of this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Jay J. Van Bavel, Leor M. Hackel & Y. Jenny Xiao

Authors
  1. Jay J. Van Bavel
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  2. Leor M. Hackel
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  3. Y. Jenny Xiao
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Correspondence to Jay J. Van Bavel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Jean Decety

  2. Fondation IPSEN pour la Recherche Therapeutique, Boulogne Billancourt Cedex, France

    Yves Christen

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Van Bavel, J.J., Hackel, L.M., Xiao, Y.J. (2014). The Group Mind: The Pervasive Influence of Social Identity on Cognition. In: Decety, J., Christen, Y. (eds) New Frontiers in Social Neuroscience. Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02904-7_4

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