Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides
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About the talk:
We live in enormously polarized times. From politics to race, religion, gender, and class, division runs rampant. In 2020, 40 percent of each political party said that supporters of the opposing party were “downright evil.” In 2019, hate crimes reached a ten-year high in the United States. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. How did we become so alienated? Why is our sense of belonging so undermined?
Join Geoffrey Cohen, author of Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides, in a fireside chat with Ethan Kross to learn science-backed techniques for navigating modern social life that can help us overcome our differences, create empathy, and forge lasting connections even across divides. Geoffrey will share useful takeaways for managers and educators of all stripes to create connection – even during challenging times – and improve daily life at work, in school, in our homes, and in our communities. Learn how belonging can help those around you thrive.
Student Watch Party: Watch this streamed session together with other students for an in-person community experience followed by a structured discussion about how to put insights from Positive Links into practice. Registration for the Student Watch Party is included as an option when registering for this session of Positive Links.
About Cohen:
Geoffrey L. Cohen is a Professor of Psychology and the James G. March Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business at Stanford University. He is a social psychologist by training and received his PhD at Stanford and his BA at Cornell.
Professor Cohen’s research examines the processes that shape people’s sense of belonging and self-concept and the role that these processes play in various social problems. He has studied the big and small threats to belonging and self-integrity that people encounter in school, work, healthcare settings, politics, communities, and relationships. He and others have developed concrete, science-backed strategies to create more welcoming spaces for people from all walks of life. He believes that the development of psychological theory depends not just on descriptive and observational research but on theory-driven intervention. He has long been inspired by Kurt Lewin’s quip, “The best way to understand something is to try to change it.”
Stay connected with Geoffrey: Personal website
Host:
Ethan Kross, Faculty Associate, Center for Positive Organizations; Professor of Psychology and Management & Organizations, University of Michigan
Series Sponsors:
The Center for Positive Organizations thanks Sanger Leadership Center, Tauber Institute for Global Operations, and Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies for their support of the 2023-24 Positive Links Speaker Series.
Series Promotional Partners:
Additionally, we thank Ann Arbor SPARK and the Managerial and Organizational Cognition (MOC) Division of AOM for their Positive Links Speaker Series promotional partnerships.
