The unwounded help those injured after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. (Photo: Aaron “tango” Tang/CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons) With so many accounts of human nastiness to others, and violent crime the obsession of television documentaries and dramas, it is worth

An anti-vaccination protest from the last pandemic. This one, sponsored by the the Anti-Vaccination League of Canada, took place in Toronto in 1919. Fundamentalist Trump supporters and vaccine deniers are textbook examples of how ignorance can be the basis of

“The membership of this marauding group gives them a feeling of power and strengthens their identity.” (Photo: Tyler Merbler/ CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons) The outrageous attack on the U.S. Congress when in session has generated an understandable outcry in the

David Canter considers why the social sciences failed to influence behavior in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 The remarkably rapid development of a handful of vaccines that enhance the immune system’s ability to fight COVID-19 is an impressive

As a psychologist the most challenging aspect of the recent presidential election, for me, is understanding why 70 million U.S. citizens voted for Donald Trump. Many have pointed out that this is a man whose communications have the style and content

As a British academic schooled, from an early age, in the niceties of public debate, I’m struggling to understand the acceptability of a president behaving as Donald Trump did in his recently televised confrontation with former Vice President Joe Biden. I

Race only became a term that implied a radical difference in the nature of people in the 18th century (this illustration of the ‘types of mankind’ dates from the next century, in 1893). The impact of the Black Lives Matter

Is this an example of a government following the science? Some years ago, as a way of showing the impotence of social science, especially psychology, I asked, ‘Why has psychology not created any weapons of mass destruction?” After all, the

When the levee breaks … An example of Newton’s First Law of Motion as it applies to human behavior? (Image: Lt. Cmdr. Mark Moran, NOAA Corps, NMAO/AOC) It may be thought that the slow reaction in many countries to the

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had it right Pictures of supermarket shoppers filling their .trolleys to overflowing with large packets of toilet paper is labelled ‘panic buying’. Brought on by the apparently imminent spread of COVID-19, these rabid consumers