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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... developed essentially the same justification for their misery . The chances are infinitesimal , of course , that millions of untouchables , each thinking independently , would all invent the doctrine of karma . Insofar as they formed a ...
... developed . Barring the invention of an instrument for reading the individual mind , however , the tech- niques will ... developed for a country where most adults own cars . It would not be as meaningful in an economically backward ...
... developed at length by Gordon Tullock , Toward a Mathematics of Politics ( Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press , 1967 ) , chaps . 7-8 ; and Hannah Arendt , " Lying in Politics , " in her Crises of the Republic ( New York : Harcourt ...
Contents
Collective Conservatism | 105 |
The Obstinacy of Communism | 118 |
The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System | 128 |
Copyright | |
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