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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... pref- erence falsification through knowledge falsification . In so doing , we distort , corrupt , and impoverish the knowledge in the public domain . We conceal from others facts we know to be true and expose them to ones we consider ...
... pref- erence is his reputational utility - utility from the reputation of har- boring that particular preference . The reputational utility conferred by the revelation of a preference can vary with time and place . This variability will ...
... pref- erences . There is no denying that we sometimes recognize the exis- tence , and generally understand the prevalence , of preference falsifi- cation . The point is that our means of identifying specific occurrences of preference ...
Contents
Collective Conservatism | 105 |
The Obstinacy of Communism | 118 |
The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System | 128 |
Copyright | |
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