Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides

"Is this a setting for people like me? Are these my people?"We've all asked these questions, or ones like them, at some time or another. Sometimes the yes is so clear as to make us overlook the question; at other times, the possibility seems so remote as to make us want to run from it.But here's the thing: wherever we are, we ended up there somehow for a reason. Maybe we share the same neighborhood, even if the people there don't look like the people we're used to. We might have pursued education, representing a family for whom hasn't previously been, maybe couldn't have previously been, a priority. Or perhaps we're just glad to have the same smiling person hook us up with our daily caffeine hit.In each of these situations, and countless others, we want to know we're accepted, respected, and valued. We want to feel like we have a place. We want to belong.Through poignant stories, research summaries, and narrative that ties the two together engagingly and accessibly, Dr. Cohen helps the reader understand how far outside the fold many of us feel, how common the desire to have a group that accepts us is, and practical strategies we can use to all help each other achieve the sense of belonging that Baumeister and Leary (1995), Walton and Cohen (2007), Walton and Brady (2017), Gray, Yough, and Williams (2018) have discussed in their research. The book is a comfortable, approachable read.

Get this book!! I've read this book twice in the past 18 months. In addition to research articles by Geoffrey Cohen, his book was an essential part of my research on belonging for my doctoral dissertation completed this year. A well written, easy to read text, packed with a perfect mix of scholarly and practical wisdom and information. The second time I read it was with colleagues at work, a chapter at a time that always stimulated robust conversations and further enhanced my own understanding. Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides should be on your bookshelf.

There's more to Belonging than meets the eye. It reads like a definitive series of stories about membership in a group while serving as a scholarly treatise on the psychology of belonging to something bigger than one's self. Cohen exhibits an honest, down-home style of expression that includes admitting when he's fallen prey to the psychological phenomenon he is studying as a scholar. He will admit his own reactions -- including adverse ones -- to some unsettling dimension of a study's set-up to say, for example, "I felt uncomfortable with that." Cohen, nevertheless, remains non-judgmental yet thorough. The extensive and comprehensive bibliography exhibits that scholarship, with attribution of subject matter in the text to its appropriate source. His sources include not only published references and studies, but also his own personal experiences as well as learnings from family, particularly his father, an incredibly intelligent and remarkably likeable physicist. Belonging, the book, stands as a scholarly work on the title concept while reading like illustrative vignettes explaining the subject in its finer and revealing detail. Superbly written, a must-read for psychologists and not just for professionals but for anyone who wants to be something more than an individual.

Book arrived quickly, as described. Perfect condition.

While this isn't specifically aimed at higher education leadership, it hits on the nose exactly the things that need to be centered by the leaders in this field. The fact that the author comes from higher education seems to make his connection more natural for these readers. Everyone in leadership really should read this, but especially those in education from the classrooms to the central offices. Highly recommend that this one not just go on the list, but that it jumps to the front of the list so that it starts having impacts as soon as possible.

Excellent distillation of the research on belonging, written in a consumable way for anyone interested in supporting other's sense of belonging and / or understanding your own experiences in multiple contexts. As an added bonus, Dr. Cohen's interviews on multiple, freely available podcasts (online or by using an app) further bring to life the concepts and examples discussed in the text.

This is my new favorite book. Cohen's combination of research summaries, practical applications, accessible stories, essential themes and great writing is an exemplary text in social psychology. Belonging, in my mind, "belongs" on the rung in Maslow's hierarchy that is just above food, clothing and shelter. Feeling included, connected, supported and nurtured is required for us to be healthy, happy, and sometimes even alive. Thank you, Professor Cohen for repositioning this aspect of human nature in our collective psyche to where it has always been--hiding out in plain sight.

As the lone female in a STEM PhD class at a top 5 university in the 1960's, I REALLY do understand how it feels to not "belong". So I came to the party wanting to love this book, but I found it a bit disappointing. I found myself slogging through what I felt were rather wordy descriptions of concepts that seemed obvious. Also I felt that the detailed descriptions of the experimental designs detracted from the flow and impact of the conclusions. It seemed like review article in a social psychology journal translated and expanded into conversational style for mass publication. Maybe that's what society needs to solve this problem??? I DID very much like the last chapter summarizing the key takeaways or "How we can all create belonging" which I felt contained everything I need to get from the book with much less effort.