Why Rumors Travel Faster Than the Truth
In March 2018, a team of MIT researchers published one of the most detailed studies ever conducted on how information moves through a social network. They tracked roughly…
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Why Groups Often Think Worse Than the People in Them
The Puzzle of the Smart Group That Fails In April 1961, a small team of senior American officials approved a plan to land 1,400 Cuban exiles on a…
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Why Doesn’t Anyone Help? The Psychology of the Bystander Effect
In March 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked and killed outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. Newspaper reports claimed that 38 neighbors heard…
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Why Societies Search for Scapegoats in Times of Crisis
In the summer of 1348, as the Black Death swept across Europe, killing perhaps a third of the population within a few years, rumors began to spread through…
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Why Ordinary People Obey Authority Even When It Feels Wrong
In the summer of 1961, a rotating cast of ordinary New Haven residents walked into a laboratory at Yale University to take part in what they believed was…
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Why Recognition Feels Like a Basic Human Need
A promotion arrives, but the first thing many people do is check whether anyone else has noticed. A carefully worded text goes unanswered for hours, and the silence…
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Why We Follow the Crowd, Even When We Know Better
In the early 1950s, the psychologist Solomon Asch invited a group of college students into a lab and asked them to complete what looked like a simple vision…
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How Fast Do First Impressions Really Form?
You meet someone at a dinner party. Before they’ve finished their first sentence, you’ve already decided whether you like them. Confident or awkward, warm or guarded, trustworthy or…
