Connect your Claude, Codex or OpenClaw for full transcripts on millions of podcasts. Two week free trial, cancel anytime.

Start free trial →
JV Jay Van Bavel Jay Van Bavel Psychology Professor and Director of the Center for Conflict & Cooperation at New York University | Author of "The Power Of Us" book & newsletter @powerofus

“That's why I also say with the sycophancy, if NYU changed the default, it affects 20,000 faculty and 50,000 students tomorrow. And that's going to have a big scaling effect more than me.”

Behavioral Grooves Podcast · November 2026

“That's why I also say with the sycophancy, if NYU changed the default, it affects 20,000 faculty and 50,000 students tomorrow. And that's going to have a big scaling effect more than me.” — Jay Van Bavel, Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Context

Pushed to find some hope after a bleak discussion, Jay argues organizations, not national politics, are where change is most feasible, using the example of a university changing one AI default setting.

Transcript

Behavioral Grooves Podcast Around 42:13 into the episode
Jay Van Bavel

…for different types of political agendas and policies. And they're going to cause a lot of friction with the mainstream system. So I do think like you can't ignore these things just don't go away. Like a lot of other countries end up in revolutions of various sorts when this type of stuff happens.

Tim Houlihan

…social identities. So if the trends are for more bifurcation, if there's greater variety and more extremism, I hate to ask this question because I feel like it's so Debbie Downer. But Jay, maybe you can, maybe you can spend some hope in this. Where could we fend off the downward spiral, I guess?

Jay Van Bavel

…And the organization would benefit from having like a healthier culture and work environment. So that actually would be: if I was to pick some places where I think we could get traction on change that could be kind of mandated to employees and could be, I always am a fan of science-based, not just ideological or value-based training. Then I think you actually could make traction there. That's why I also say with the sycophancy, if NYU changed the default, it affects 20,000 faculty and 50,000 students tomorrow. And that's going to have a big scaling effect more than me. And if the companies don't want to, they won't. But the university has a vested interest in changing that setting.

Tim Houlihan

And ironically, there's nothing democratic about that. No.

Kurt Nelson

Well, and actually, I know there's hope there, but I also, it pains me because from what, and Tim and I have had this conversation before, where we see many large organizations, particularly the tech organizations, are going is away from some of those like broader scale, let's pull people together…

Tim Houlihan

Maybe we could, and maybe we could sort of wrap this up by just checking doing a quick fact check. Is it true that you actually taught a class when you were trapped in an elevator with your kids? Is this myth? Is this urban myth or is this? Is this true?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Behavioral Grooves Podcast