Abstract: Is there a link between the Arab Spring uprisings and the behaviour of market traders?...
From Cairo to Tunis, demonstrators united by emotion, purpose and social media gather in their thousands to topple long-standing despotic regimes. Across the UK, crowds of a different temperament surge through summer streets, leaving behind them a trail of destruction. Meanwhile, in the world's financial centres, bond traders linked by the internet behave like a "virtual" crowd as they sell the securities of increasingly embattled eurozone members, leading yields to soar.
The crowd was at the heart of some of the most memorable events of 2011, demonstrating the power of the group driven by common identity and capacity for decision-making. They are classic examples of the herd mentality - the shared and self-regulated thinking of individuals in a group - an area of study popular with sociologists and
Abstract: Psychology, it seems, has been hijacked by TV writers of female angst...
Maybe it says something about the male human condition that when I die I want to do so in a blaze of glory, saving a toddler from an oncoming train, wrestling a Great White shark, or attempting to defuse a bomb with nothing but a pair of tweezers and nerves of steel. I didn't think it would be clutching my chest whilst crouched next to the psychology section in Exclusive Books. But it seems I have the female human condition to thank for that.
When I left school I chose to study clinical psychology because it sounded cool. It was also, I believed at the time, a great place to meet girls. Most of my schoolmates had chosen to study science or engineering, and I certainly didn't fancy my university career
Abstract: You could be more connected to your career than you realise...
"What's in a name?" wrote Shakespeare, "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". An admirable line for a man who was in the wrong job - he should have been a soldier, or at least an ironmonger. The clue is in his own name.
Not so long ago I was doing some research for an article on bar-headed geese (not for this magazine obviously). They're remarkable creatures that, it is believed, can fly right over the top of the Himalayas, at altitudes that would kill a human. Anyway, my investigations led me to a study by a Dr Hawkes. I suggested to her that it was interesting that someone called Hawkes was studying birds. She agreed.
But then she took me in a direction where things
