Conformity: The Power of Social Influences by Cass Sunstein. He is currently a professor at Harvard and was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for 27 years. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School.
From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board.
In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway. Furthermore in 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioral Insights and Sciences for Health.
In fact, his previous books Nudge and Noise are all best sellers and provide wonderful insights to human behavior. The focus of this book is addressing decisions influenced by social pressure.
Similarly, this can be for the better (logic, facts, and even experiments) or worse. So, it is very easy today to witness irrational social media posts influencing decisions.
Conformity has two faces
Cass begins by sharing a baseline that conformity is be positive or negative. As we know, conformity is a basic requirement and is proving to be necessary today. However, the focus is to understand the larger circumstances and become aware of the effects of conformity upon your decision making process. In addition, there is a real drive to understand the full impact of social media placing new pressures upon individuals to make decisions:
On social media, that happens all the time. The result can be to lead people to errors and even to illness and death. “Fake news” can spread like wildfire; informational cascades are the culprits. In 2017 and 2018, that was a particular concern for Facebook, whose platform has often been used as a basis for the rapid transmission of falsehoods.
pgs. 104-105.
Cascasdes
There are two key factors regarding conformity. First, people communicate information they believe to be correct. Secondly, other trusted people are providing feedback to continue gain their trust as they view ‘truth’. However, combining both can ultimately reveal that we fall along a baseline that shows we are similar as neighbors. Here is where social media breaks the longstanding idea of ‘neighbors’ physically reside on your street.
For example, recalling President Kennedy’s first book Profiles in Courage. It was a best seller and projected his political future. However, his father Joe Kennedy arraigned to have tens of thousands of early copies purchased ensuring the book would be a bestseller. Think fake Amazon.com reviews.
Slide into extremism
Cass is focusing on how this makes conforming to extreme positions more impactful. As a result, much of his research this falls along political conformity. Think taxes and penalties for cheating on your taxes.
In conclusion, Conformity provides insights proving three points: confident people sway others known as “confidence heuristic”, consensus within your group is difficult to contradict, and finally those who are not not like you ultimately do not influence you.