Catastrophe!: How Psychology Explains Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse

We like to believe that in a crisis we think clearly and act on the evidence. Psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson has the case files that say otherwise.

Why did shoppers strip toilet paper from shelves in the first weeks of COVID-19? Why did police, courts, and therapists spend a decade chasing satanic cults that didn't exist? Why did a trained airline crew fly a working plane into the ocean? Catastrophe! looks at what happens inside our heads, and inside our institutions, when disaster hits, and why the response so often makes things worse.

Each chapter takes a different calamity: pandemics, nuclear accidents, terrorism, wildfires, the moral panics and conspiracy theories that follow trauma, and the hardening of division after 9/11 and the murder of George Floyd. Ferguson names the habits of mind that do the damage, including dichotomous thinking, blaming, and the reflex to assume anyone who disagrees is acting in bad faith. He is as hard on his own side as on the other, and readers who want a partisan verdict won't find one here.

The book ends on what works. Drawing on his research into crime, violence, and media effects, Ferguson sets out steps individuals and societies can take to manage the next crisis better, and makes the case that, for all the panics, we have made real progress.

Christopher J. Ferguson is a professor of psychology at Stetson University and the author of How Madness Shaped History.

The book, Catastrophe!: How Psychology Explains Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9781633887954 in Hardcover by Christopher J. Ferguson may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.