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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... decision will obviously be negligible . By switching his public preference from 0 to 100 , or vice versa , he would alter the decision by only 0.000001 units . For all practical pur- poses , therefore , he may treat the group decision ...
... decision will remain within a narrow range regardless of the prefer- ence our individual chooses to convey . Intrinsic utility still peaks at 20 , however , which means that he can bring society's decision closest to his private ...
... decision is es- sentially fixed . As shown in Figure 2.3 , a fixed decision renders the intrinsic utility function nearly flat . With the same reputational and expressive utility functions as in the previous figure , the optimal public ...
Contents
Collective Conservatism | 105 |
The Obstinacy of Communism | 118 |
The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System | 128 |
Copyright | |
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