Society

In a book I wrote with a colleague on organizational failures (The Apology Impulse) the inability of many of them to confront their failures, except to say a meaningless “we’re sorry,” is legend.This post was […]

A multi-country study has linked internet use to a reduction in depressive symptoms. City University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong researchers found a positive association among adults 50 years and older […]

In South Sudan, there is an age-old practice called bride price. A groom’s family pays a bride’s family for the marriage, usually in cattle.This post was originally published on this website.

Speaking with a foreign accent mitigates the impact of making grammatical errors, depending on the personality type of the listener, a study has found.This post was originally published on this website.

Throughout accounts of 17th-century witch trials in Europe and North America, physical features alone were considered undeniable proof of witchcraft. The belief was that the devil branded witches’ bodies with symbolic, material marks—such as unusual […]

Nonverbal behavior in the courtroom can significantly influence how judges assess the credibility of witnesses in their rulings. But is reliance on “body language” based on sound science?This post was originally published on this website.

Domestic and family violence (DFV) has received increasing attention in recent years. It is most commonly associated with intimate partner violence between current and former partners, followed by abuse perpetrated against children by their parents […]

Military musicians returning from the Napoleonic wars established Britain’s first brass bands earlier than previously thought, new research reveals. The study undermines the idea that brass bands were a civilian and exclusively northern creation.This post […]

Medieval people have a reputation for being superstitious—and many of the supernatural phenomena found in the pages of medieval chronicles, miracle stories and romances are still alive in modern culture. Think ghosts, werewolves, demons, vampires, […]

This time of year, I often run across articles proclaiming Halloween a modern form of the pagan Irish holiday of Samhain—pronounced SAW-en. But as a historian of Ireland and its medieval literature, I can tell […]