In late April, Aleksandra Cichocka (Principal Investigator) and Stefan Leach (Research Associate) visited New York University as part of the Leverhulme-funded research project examining how people express their national identities in language.
Aleksandra presented her research on collective narcissism in a talk titled “Can Ingroup Love Hurt? The Role of Collective Narcissism in the (Mis)treatment of Ingroup Members” at the NYU Social Colloquium. In her talk, she discussed the negative impact of collective narcissism on the treatment of ingroup members. Her presentation was well attended and sparked a lively discussion of issues of social justice and equality.
Stefan presented recent progress on the Leverhulme project to Jay van Bavel’s Social Identity & Morality Lab and John Jost’s Social Justice Lab in a talk titled “Identity Rhetoric in US and UK Politics“. He shared the progress made on the project and discussed the challenges encountered during the research process. The presentation generated a constructive debate among the attendees, who shared their perspectives on how best to identify expressions of national identity in political discourse.
The visit provided an excellent opportunity for the project team to meet with Jay van Bavel and others, exchange ideas, and discuss how to integrate recent advances in large language models, such as chatGPT, to their research. The talks also allowed the researchers to receive constructive feedback and valuable insights work, which will undoubtedly aid in their future research endeavours. Overall, the project team’s visit to NYU was a productive and insightful experience, and they are excited about the potential of applying large language models to their work. At the very least, they are proving more than capable of writing blog posts.