After the horror, the heroes

During the 1950s, the landmark Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that when groups must compete with one another, intergroup conflict, hostility, and even violence may result. At the Oklahoman summer camp, two troops of boys—termed the Rattlers and the Eagles—took part in a week-long tournament. During this time, their negativity culminated in derogatory name-calling, fistfights, and even vandalism and destruction of property. However, this work also revealed that such tension...

Nightmares and night terrors represent two distinct types of sleep disturbances that differ in timing, characteristics, and the sleeper's recall of the event. Nightmares are vivid, disturbing dreams that usually awaken the sleeper from REM sleep, a stage of sleep where brain activity is high, and dreams are most frequent. Upon awakening, individuals often have detailed recollections of their nightmares, which can include themes of threats to survival, security, or self-esteem.
Nightmares...

The famous and controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University, demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.

Deindividuation is a form of social influence on an individual’s behavior such that the individual engages in unusual or non-normal behavior while in a group setting. Why? Because in these group settings, the individual no longer sees themselves as an individual anymore, disinhibiting their behavior and personal restraint.

The discussion of bullying highlights the problem of witnesses not intervening to help a victim. This is a common occurrence, as the following well-publicized event demonstrates. In 1964, in Queens, New York, a 19-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked by a person with a knife near the back entrance to her apartment building and again in the hallway inside her apartment building. When the attack occurred, she screamed for help numerous times and eventually died from her stab wounds.

Emotionally traumatic events often lead to memories that are exceptionally vivid and enduring, sometimes persisting with remarkable clarity throughout an individual's life. A classic example of this phenomenon is a person who survives a car accident. Even years later, they may recall every detail of the event with startling accuracy — the screeching of the tires, the jarring impact, and the acrid smell of burning rubber. Such vividness contrasts sharply with how an individual...