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POST-DOC
PHILIP PARNAMETS - NYU Social Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow
Philip completed his PhD in cognitive science at Lund University and has spent two years as a postdoc with the Emotion Lab at Karolinska Institutet. His research is grounded in a broad interest in the cognitive and computational mechanisms underlying preference change, decision making and learning, especially in the moral domain. In the Social Identity and Morality lab his work focuses on dynamic models of social learning about moral agents and of moral choices generally. Philip spends his spare time creating, listening or dancing to electronic music.
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Cooperation and Cohesion
While social conflict is essential for a flourishing society–facilitating innovation, accountability, and social change–extreme division can erode trust, cooperation, and democracy itself. In recent years, many countries, including the U.S., have seen a rise in unproductive and harmful social division, with outgroup hate, empathy gaps, and false polarization deepening societal fractures worldwide. Though often framed through the lens of political parties, polarization extends beyond politics, shaping tensions between ethnic, racial, religious, sectarian, and national groups. Our tendency to categorize and judge others based on group identity emerges astonishingly early in childhood (Leshin et al., 2022; Yudkin, Van Bavel, & Rhodes, 2022) and remains a defining feature of social life across cultures and ages (Van Bavel et al., 2022). While group loyalty fosters belonging and prosocial behavior (Hackel et al., 2017), it can also fuel bias, discrimination, and division. Affective polarization—animosity toward an outgroup—is linked to violence, intolerance, and exclusion. Social media may be intensifying these divisions by amplifying content that expresses moral outrage, negativity, and outgroup animosity (Brady et al., 2017; Rathje et al., 2021; Robertson et al., 2024a). Our analyses of millions of online content find that content including moral outrage and outgroup derogation spreads more easily (Brady et al., 2017; Rathje et al., 2021), monopolizes our attention (Brady, Gantman, & Van Bavel, 2020; Robertson et al., 2023), and reinforces polarization and echo chambers (Brady et al., 2017; Brady et al., under revision). Social media not only skews what we see and how we interact online, but it also affects how we navigate the real world, for instance, by creating an illusion that opposing groups are more extreme and different than they actually are—a phenomenon known as false polarization (Robertson et al., 2024b). Fortunately, polarization is not inevitable. Most people don’t want to live in a divided society. They would prefer to see more positive, accurate, and educational content gain traction online (Rathje et al., 2023) and are generally drawn to conversations that foster understanding and common ground (Reinero et al., 2021). By leveraging insights from social psychology and related disciplines, we can develop strategies to reduce polarization, bridge divides, and promote healthier discourse—both online and offline.