Here is a blast from the not-so-distant past: the Republican president speaks the day after the Democrats win a bitterly contested presidential election. Take it away, George W.: No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday across the country. […]
Politics
COVIDxHalloween: The Psychology of Wearing Masks
[A version of this article appeared in Psychology Today on 28 October 2020 ] Boo! Scared you. Yes, it’s Halloween. That season when children wear masks and we all pretend to be terrified of them. But as with just about everything else this year, COVID has turned convention on its head. Now, […]
COVID conspiracies and the psychology of vaccine hesitancy
There’s a lot of talk about a vaccine for COVID-19. However, vaccines only work if people take them, and for that we require people to think cogently and coherently about the coronavirus. But if that were actually happening, there might not actually be a pandemic in the first place. Take […]
The other pandemic
There has been another racist attack on property in Galway, where I live: Arsonists have burned down a house that the local council was preparing for new residents. A family from the Traveller Community were about to move in. Late on Sunday night, just before 5 am, attackers set the […]
Things to do in Chernobyl when you’re alive
Given the current global lockdown scenario, I thought it was high time I posted some photographs from my (pre-Covid) visit to Chernobyl and the now deserted nearby city of Pripyat. Perhaps such places present a lesson. We get to see what society looks like when humanity itself is no longer […]
Covid-19, Psychology, and the Politics of Life-and-Death Science
[This article appeared in the June 2020 issue of the ‘Irish Psychologist’] As we all know by now, contagion is a matter of behaviour as well as biology. What we do, where we go, and how we think can all help to suppress the invisible enemy. Handwashing is back in […]