Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference FalsificationPreference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities. |
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... conservatism . Collective conservatism entails re- sistance to change on the part of a community ; personal conservatism is an attitude against reform on the part of individuals . The latter is not a necessary condition of the former ...
... conservatism that I have just presented runs from 0 to 100 percent . For any established public opinion , the higher the degree of collective conservatism , the more it owes its per- sistence to history . To complete the exercise , I ...
... conservatism , traditionalism connotes a causal relationship . But there is a difference : conservatism conveys an attachment to ... conservatism relies only on the preferences and choices of the relevant decision Collective Conservatism 115.
Contents
Collective Conservatism | 105 |
The Obstinacy of Communism | 118 |
The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System | 128 |
Copyright | |
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