Aomar Boum, assistant professor, School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies and Religious Studies Program, University of Arizona

Since the Holocaust, social psychologists have asked: Why do people succumb to evil? Theories point to peer pressure and the power of conformity. But Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher reject the idea that people become automatons in a group. Their mock-prison study reveals something more complex about …

Shankar Vedantam has spent a lot of time thinking about the links between science and human behavior. His recent book, The Hidden Brain, challenges us to consider the unconscious biases we may carry, and the ways they steer our behavior.

After his grandmother’s death, Arnon Goldfinger stumbled upon evidence of a long-term friendship between his Jewish grandparents and a Nazi officer. In his documentary The Flat, he tries to make sense of this relationship, exploring how silence resides in both victims and perpetrators, and how, so…