Is Cognitive Dissonance Actually a Thing? In 1934, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit eastern India, killing thousands and devastating several cities. Curiously, in areas that were spared the worst destruction, stories soon spread that an even bigger disaster was on its way. Leon Festinger, a young American psychologist at the University of Minnesota, read about these rumors in the early nineteen-fifties and was puzzled. Festinger didn't think people would voluntarily adopt anxiety-inducing ideas. Instead, he reasoned, the rumors could better be described as "anxiety justifying." Some had felt the earth shake and were overwhelmed with fear. When the outcome--they were spared--didn't match their emotions, they embraced predictions that affirmed their fright.

The images are everywhere: People crowded face-to-face in swimming pools, shoulder-to-shoulder in indoor bars, cheering without masks at a rally held by President Trump, who often downplays the global pandemic. Now, as many public health experts predicted, waves of new COVID-19 infections and deaths are rolling across the South and West. Many, still practicing social distancing, look at their fellow Americans and ask, "What are they thinking?" We turned to Steven Pinker for help with an answer. The professor of psychology at Harvard, author of widely discussed books, including How the Mind Works and most recently, Enlightenment Now, sees the deep-seated mindset, tribalism, at work in people's defiance of health recommendations.

Finally a new year is here after the most politically divisive 12 months in a very long time. In the UK, Brexit shattered dreams and friendships. In the US, the polarisation was already huge, but a bitter election campaign made the divisions even deeper. A researcher from King's College London explains how we start with fairly small opinions about an issue to being fully entrenched, as many may not have been for one side during Brexit but were completely sure their opinions were in fact right How is it possible that people come to hold such widely different views of reality? And what can we do (if anything) to break out of the cycle of increasingly hostile feelings towards people who seem to be on'the other side' from us?