Belonging

Geoffrey L. Cohen opens by diagnosing a "crisis of belonging" in modern society. A survey his lab conducted during the 2016 election season found that black women and politically conservative white men, groups at opposite poles of political discourse, both felt they least belonged on a law school campus. Cohen argues that belonging is far more than a comfort: Threats to it activate neural networks associated with physical pain, and chronic loneliness is as destructive to the body as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case have documented rising "diseases of despair," deaths from addiction, overdose, and suicide, driven largely by disconnection.

Cohen's central claim is that each person possesses an unrecognized power to combat these forces by changing the situations they inhabit, sometimes in the smallest ways. He calls this practice "situation-crafting" and the research-backed techniques it produces "wise interventions."

Cohen traces situation-crafting to Kurt Lewin, a German Jewish psychologist considered the father of social psychology, who emigrated to the United States in 1933. Lewin's 1938 studies showed that the same boys behaved differently depending on adult leadership style: Under democratic leaders they were friendly and creative; under authoritarian leaders they became hostile or apathetic. Cohen illustrates the concept through Claiborne P. "C. P." Ellis, the Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan in Durham, North Carolina, who joined the Klan out of poverty and a need to feel he mattered. After growing disillusioned, C. P. was recruited by community organizer Bill Riddick to join a "charette," a community forum on school integration; Riddick saw C. P. as an influential gatekeeper among segregationists. Over ten days of discussions alongside prominent black activist Ann Atwater, C. P. discovered they shared parallel experiences of shame. He voted for integration, tore up his Klan membership card, and became a union leader with majority support from black members. From these examples, Cohen identifies five resources for situation-crafting: intervening when people feel acute doubt (time); engaging people as agents of change (participatory processes); providing new norms (reference groups); letting people feel valued for who they are (self-affirmations); and inhabiting new roles that become identities.

Cohen defines "belonging uncertainty" as doubting whether one is fully accepted in a particular environment and argues that belonging is not a fixed trait but a perception continually re-created in every situation. He describes the "social-belonging intervention" he designed with social psychologist Greg Walton, in which first-year college students read stories from upperclassmen about how belonging doubts were common but diminished over time, then wrote their own accounts. Black students who received the intervention earned higher cumulative GPAs, halving the achievement gap with white peers. The intervention has since been administered at roughly 40 colleges, producing a 13-percentage-point increase in full-time enrollment among poor urban youth.

Examining Us-vs.-Them behavior, Cohen argues that much harmful intergroup conduct is driven not by innate hostility but by the desire to conform in order to belong. He draws on the story of Christian Picciolini, who joined the Chicago Area Skinheads at 14 because the group offered belonging to a socially isolated teenager, and argues that the way to reach members of hate groups is to offer alternative sources of connection, citing the PLO's deradicalization of Black September members by providing them with marriages, steady jobs, and family life. Cohen also presents research on bridging divides: social psychologist Muzafer Sherif's 1954 Robbers Cave experiment found that hostile groups of boys reconciled when given superordinate goals requiring cooperation, and social psychologist Elliot Aronson's Jigsaw Classroom in newly integrated Austin, Texas, schools reduced prejudice by making each student an expert who taught part of a lesson to racially mixed peers. Social psychologist Elizabeth Paluck's experiment in post-genocide Rwanda found that villagers who listened together to a reconciliation radio soap opera for a year became more trusting and more willing to speak up about disagreements.

Cohen introduces the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), the cognitive bias that leads people to attribute others' behavior to character rather than circumstances. He presents the Pygmalion effect study by Harvard social psychologist Robert Rosenthal and school principal Lenore Jacobson, in which teachers told that randomly selected students were intellectual "bloomers" elicited IQ gains of up to 12 points, demonstrating how expectations shape reality. He notes that a 2021 study of almost 50,000 participants found standardized ability tests left 75 to 85 percent of differences in outcomes unexplained. Cohen examines how stereotypes compound the FAE, presenting social psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson's 1995 study of stereotype threat, the anxiety of being at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group: When a difficult test was described as measuring ability, black Stanford students performed much worse than white peers, but when described as assessing problem-solving, the gap largely closed. Cohen's own values-affirmation intervention, in which seventh-graders wrote about their most important values, produced benefits approaching a full grade point for black students; seven years later, affirmed students were 14 percentage points more likely to be attending college.

Cohen challenges assumptions about reading others, advocating for "perspective-getting," the practice of asking people directly for their views rather than imagining or assuming them, a concept from research by psychologists Tal Eyal, Mary Steffel, and Nicholas Epley. Their work found that imagining another's perspective often reduces accuracy because people project their own reactions. Simply asking questions dramatically improves understanding.

In the book's third part, Cohen applies these insights across domains. In education, he presents "wise criticism," in which critical feedback is paired with a statement of high standards and belief in the student's potential; a single handwritten note increased the percentage of black middle school students who revised essays from 17 to 72 percent. In the workplace, he presents social psychologist Jessi Smith's intervention for STEM faculty hiring, which combined workshops, data sharing, and goal-setting to achieve 50 percent gender parity while improving job satisfaction for both women and men.

Cohen presents research linking belonging to physical health. Genomics researcher Steve Cole's work on the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA), a biological pattern in which chronic social stressors activate inflammatory genes while suppressing antiviral ones, reveals how isolation contributes to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions. The strongest predictor of lower CTRA is eudaimonic well-being, the experience of leading a life filled with meaning and purpose. Elderly people assigned to mentor children and those who regularly performed small acts of kindness showed decreased CTRA, while values-affirmation exercises improved other health measures, including stress hormones and medication adherence.

In policing, a one-day workshop on procedural justice, the principle of fairness and respectful treatment in institutional processes, for over 8,000 Chicago officers produced 732 fewer misconduct complaints and saved an estimated $4.1 million. Cohen highlights Camden, New Jersey, where police chief J. Scott Thomson shifted from a "warrior" to a "guardian" model, reducing violent crime by 21 percent over five years.

Addressing political polarization, Cohen presents research showing that values affirmation increases openness to opposing views. He describes the deep canvassing technique tested by political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, in which trained canvassers listened without judgment, asked voters to recall a time they felt judged, and invited them to connect that feeling to the experiences of transgender people. Three months later, voters expressed lasting support for transgender rights, with no direct arguments having been made.

Cohen closes by consolidating his findings into practices anyone can adopt: Fight the FAE by considering situational causes of behavior; ask questions rather than assume; avoid authoritarian approaches; affirm others by creating opportunities for them to express their values; and craft situations with care. He quotes Nelson Mandela: "I am not a saint unless you think a saint is a sinner who keeps trying." In any encounter, he argues, each person can foster belonging and, through this, feel more connected themselves.