Dr. Niobe Way - February 5, 2025

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Internationally recognized NYU developmental psychologist Dr. Niobe Way has spent nearly 40 years conducting empirical studies with teenagers, particularly boys and young men from diverse backgrounds. Her social science research, which focuses on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies shape child development, has made her a go-to expert on friendships, loneliness, teenagers, gender stereotypes, masculinity, and the roots of violence. In her pioneering new book, REBELS WITH A CAUSE: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture (Dutton | July 9, 2024), Way draws a direct line from her subjects’ insights—and suffering—to a much wider crisis that is impacting us all, but is in our power to change.  

Rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicide are soaring, particularly among young people. Mass violence seems almost commonplace, and virtually all of it is committed by young men between the ages of 18 and 25. Experts across fields are pointing fingers at various causes and surefire remedies. But as Way reveals in REBELS WITH A CAUSE, if we listen with curiosity to what boys and young men have to say, we learn that these are all symptoms of a crisis of connection caused by a culture that prizes the hard over the soft, thinking over feeling, the me over we, stoicism over vulnerability, when our humanity is rooted. This “boy” culture—so-called because it is based on a caricature of a boy, not because it accurately reflects them—is killing our boys and harming us all.

Dr. Niobe Way is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at NYU, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH), co-founder of agapi.teens, and the Principal Investigator (PI) on the Listening Project. She is also a PI of a 20-year longitudinal research study of Chinese families, and of The Human Connection Lab at NYU, and was on the Aspen Digital group focusing on humanizing AI and a consultant for Tiktok. Dr. Way was the President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, her doctoral degree from Harvard, and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at Yale in the psychology department. Dr. Way has authored or co-authored over a hundred journal articles, chapters, and 7 books, including DEEP SECRETS: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press | March 15, 2011), which was the inspiration for "Close" a movie that was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film and helped to change the guidelines for division 51 of the APA. Her current book in progress: Our Social Nature in a Anti-Social Culture: A Five part Story (Harvard University Press). She is currently a member of the New Pluralist.