Popular Delusions: How Social Conformity Molds Society and Polit ...

The depletion of fisheries is a typical example. Fishermen often continue taking fish until an entire species is virtually exhausted. It would be in the fishermen’s best interest to maintain the fishery, but this is not possible if everyone acts for their own immediate gain. One solution to the commons problem is government regulation. So this way of looking at human behavior has had a great influence on political science and public policy. But a solution based on establishing mutually beneficial norms of behavior is also possible. The conformity model says that people often will act for the public good, or the good of a group, without direct incentives or financial gain, if social norms support it.

Karl-Dieter Opp, a German social scientist, proposes a different solution to the free-rider problem. He argues that people may rationally act together believing their individual actions contribute to a collective goal. He describes, for instance, how East Germans mobilized politically and acted collectively to oppose the communist regime, bringing about its downfall.³⁸ Opp attributes this to rational choices by individuals to participate in collective action, though they may have overestimated their individual impact on events. This would be a counterexample to Olson’s theory, but it is also possible that many people had been influenced by social conformity to join with others and demonstrate against the government. People can conform to norms for collective political actions, just as they may support other social norms. It does not necessarily imply rationality. So how can one decide which theory is right? Opp relies on testimony of participants, but psychologists warn us against believing what people say about their motivations, because their self—reported explanation may be a reconstruction of an unknown nonconscious decision. This is indeed a difficult problem in theory testing unless there is an objective test that can discriminate between theories. A substantial portion of this book will show, however, that this can be done in limited circumstances.

Dan Kahan, a Yale law professor, similarly theorizes about how the effect of a norm for social reciprocity may overturn Olson’s arguments against collective action.³⁹