Psychology Behind Political Polarization w/ Dr. Jay Van Bavel

Culture Changers with Allison Hare · Apr 16, 2026 · 54m

You can watch two people look at the same video of the Minneapolis shooting and come to completely opposite conclusions about what happened. Why? Because their brains — literally — were looking at different parts of the screen. That's selective perception. And once Dr. Jay Van Bavel explained it to me, I couldn't stop seeing it everywhere. In my feed. In my family. In myself.

Jay is one of the top 1% of researchers in the world — not my words, that's Clarivate — and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU. His research has been cited by the US Supreme Court, the Senate, and the…