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Why Do We Turn on Innocent People?
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Why do we turn on innocent people? A convincing story, a suspicious glance and suddenly everyone’s an armchair detective. But what happens when the crowd gets it completely wrong? Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens explore the psychology of false accusations, witch hunts and mob mentality, starting with Richard Jewell, the security guard hailed as a hero after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing before becoming the target of a media storm. From the Salem witch trials and the Satanic Panic to internet detectives and social media pile-ons, they investigate how a hunch snowballs into certainty. Along the way: confirmation bias, beliefs that refuse to budge, and the famous Asch conformity experiments…