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Din Djarin, the title character of the Disney+ show The Mandalorian, learns this quickly. Played by Pedro Pascal, the stoic gunslinger has led Star Wars fans into unexplored corners of the much-loved franchise and become the world’s favorite foster dad. As Din travels to various planets tracking down the mysterious alien child Grogu (better known as Baby Yoda) and eventually seeking a good home for him, he meets people whose beliefs severely challenge his own. Din’s soul-searching becomes the heart of the show, and his willingness to question his worldview makes a good example for us as ...

While understanding Donald Trump might be near impossible, a book written in 1956 may give us insights into the motivation and behavior of Mr. Trump’s base of enthusiastic supporters. 

Guest columnist Jonathan Kahane: An answer to everything Published: 2/3/2021 12:13:23 PM There are so many things that I just don’t understand — and never will. That conclusion flies in the face of my spending 23 years of my life in academe as a student and an additional 40 years teaching and conducting research in psychology at a local college. If it had all been left up to me, I would probably still be wandering around the Bronx schoolyards looking for a stickball game. Thanks Mom and Dad. I have learned to live with open-ended questions that I can’t answer right now. The list of the...

When prophecy fails, the prophets get creative. That was the lesson of Leon Festinger and his colleagues who, in their 1956 study of an American UFO cult, coined the term "cognitive dissonance" to describe how the cultists frantically rewrote their own beliefs after their predicted apocalypse failed to appear.

Published: 1/24/2021 12:01:16 AM In a recent post about far-right movements, NBC dark-web analyst Ben Collins writes that “QAnon adherents . . . believe Trump is secretly saving the world from a cabal of child-eating Satanists, have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term.” The question is what happens when this prophecy is disconfirmed? Back in the 1950s, Leon Festinger, propounder of “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance,” and his graduate...