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

Before one can understand society at its worst, however, one must understand the ordinary and everyday, which is the starting point in the book. What makes this all the more challenging is that explanations for social behavior can be hidden in the unconscious mind. Sometimes the effect of social conformity is obvious to all, but in many other situations people are unaware of it. So how can one explore this hidden side of social behavior? The answer is that it is possible to examine a single characteristic of human behavior and extrapolate that to its full social expression. Economists do this when they start with the idea that virtually all people act in their own economic self-interest, then show how this single principle evolves in society to bring about an economic system. Similarly, the innate human desire to act like others leads to an entire range of social events, processes, and structures that one can start to make sense of. The book shows how one can detect such conformist behavior even when people are not conscious of their own motivations behind it.

A principal focus of the book is the effect of conformity on political behavior, including voting, political party systems, and elections. In many countries, conformity is the dominant force in voting and detracts from the democratic ideal that people make rational choices among candidates or political parties. A second focus of the book is the relationship between social conformity and violence, from street crime to genocide, and how these cross paths with politics. Social conformity is not just about behavior, however; it also has important implications for public policy in areas as diverse as tax compliance, public health, family planning, environmental protection, and human rights. The book demonstrates the impact of social conformity with extensive analyses of the United States, Germany, and Japan through the 20th century, supplemented by evidence from over two dozen other countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Progress toward this book greatly accelerated in the 1990s with new research by psychologists on the nature of conformity and the unconscious mind and the development of the personal computer (PC) and the Internet. Online availability of data for many countries combined with the PC made it feasible to test hypotheses on a wealth of data and examine conformity in many different societies.