For months, doctors have studied a mysterious disease that has afflicted 600 girls at a Mexican boarding school, leaving victims nauseated, feverish and sometimes unable to walk. Their conclusion: the ...

The students were hundreds of miles apart. Drugs were blamed at first. But now, researchers believe the truth was far stranger: It was likely one of the first cases of mass hysteria spreading online.

The fastest way to expose a dangerous idea is to make people laugh at it. That’s why propaganda fears satire, why bureaucrats ...

Mass hysteria, also known as mass psychosis, is when a group of people simultaneously experience similar unexplained symptoms, often due to psychological factors rather than physical causes. Factors ...

When Netflix drops all eight episodes of The Body on November 11, 2026, audiences will encounter what creator Quinn Shephard is calling a "raunchy teen psychodrama with a dash of Catholic horror" — a ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Gary Drenik is a writer covering AI, analytics and innovation. This article is more than 10 years old. In psychology it is called ...

Mass hysteria is a term used to describe the situation in which physical or psychological symptoms appear en masse, spreading rapidly throughout communities, and occasionally across whole cities and ...

The fear pandemic about the coronavirus is driving market sell-offs, stockpiling of provisions and other doomsday-is-here behaviors around the globe. During mass hysterias, the human mind goes on ...

It sounds sexist, and it’s sure to raise the ire of some feminists, but the literature does not lie. Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited ...