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The Mark Groves Podcast

#187: Understanding Mass Formation with Mattias Desmet

The Mark Groves Podcast

Mark Groves

Relationships, Society & Culture

4.95K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2022

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Themes: Psychology, Mass Formation, Groupthink, Belonging   Summary:  The psychology of individuals is interesting, and how individual psychology is influenced by groups, media, marketing and fear is an area I’m going to continue to explore. It’s like family systems but muchhhhh larger. And much more complex. Yet still simple in the narrow ways we respond when afraid — thanks to evolution and our amygdala. This is why I’M SO EXCITED that I got to interview Mattias Desmet! He is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University in Belgium with a masters degree in statistics. As an academic researcher, Mattias started to study the statistics presented around the current events in early 2020 and it became clear to him that the stats needed further exploration and discussion, as did how we were approaching it psychologically. Mattias joins me to share his expertise in a phenomenon known as "mass formation," a kind of collective hypnosis that occurs under certain societal conditions. WOW. What an incredible exploration that I thoroughly enjoyed. I hope this episode gives you deeper context for our current situation and makes you a feel less alone as you navigate today's climate.   Discover: The psychological process of "mass formation" and how it relates to current events The four specific conditions in society that when fulfilled simultaneously, lead to groupthink The surprising reason people continue to buy into a consensus narrative The most efficient strategy you can adopt to help shift the narrative   Links: Mattias Desmet's Research Sponsors: Organifi | Use code CREATETHELOVE for 20% off all products at organifi.com/createthelove Create the Love Cards | Use code CTLCARDS15 for 15% off at createthelove.com/cards Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Mark Groves podcast.

0:10.7

I'm so excited to share the words of the man that is on the podcast episode today.

0:16.3

His words I stumbled upon exploring the psychological processes of what's going on as a collective.

0:23.4

You know, I'm very fascinated with not just human psychology, but also how our biology is impacted

0:30.1

by how our mind works. You know, like what happens to our body based on our thoughts? What happens

0:35.4

to our thoughts based on our body's response?

0:38.5

You know, how do we take an information? Why do we miss some information? We all know about

0:43.8

cognitive bias, you know, that we are biased to look for the things that we agree with, that if we

0:49.2

have certain beliefs about the world, we will take an information that supports those beliefs

0:54.0

and often unconsciously

0:55.7

ignore information that challenges them. I think this is one of the hardest things to do is to be

1:01.2

open to information even as someone who's aware of bias, right? Aware of not wanting to take that in.

1:09.5

And what I do to attempt to dismiss that, not dismiss,

1:15.5

but like engage in knowing that,

1:18.5

is that I follow and read things that oppose the way

1:21.9

that I am currently seeing what might be the subject.

1:25.7

And that's hard because, of course, I'm like, shit, that might be wrong.

1:29.5

But I think, you know, as I've mentioned before,

1:31.8

I think often of the words from Russell Brand to always let our identity be fluid,

1:37.8

to allow it to shift.

1:38.9

And what that does is it makes it so well take in information that challenges our identities.

1:46.8

I've been very curious about our inability to dialogue, especially about coronavirus and vaccines, and that being the only

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