Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification

The link between intentional deception and cognitive limitations was made five centuries ago by Machiavelli. “Men are so simple and so ready to follow the needs of the moment,” he wrote, “that the deceiver will always find someone to deceive.”

Dogs that do not bark—untaught courses, unavailable survey data—may yield as much useful information as dogs that do.

In what sense do democracies and nondemocracies differ in their responsiveness to private opinion? Insofar as the former have fewer means of restricting expression, the incentives they create for preference falsification will be weaker. Two conclusions follow. First, democracies will tend to display less preference falsification than dictatorships.

The more complex the environment, the less adequate is the individual’s relevant knowledge and, hence, the less he can trust signs that his routine is obsolete. This argument has a far-reaching implication: the more complex the environment, the less sensitive individual behavior is to actual environmental shocks.

To influence a society’s actual decisions, activists must do more than satisfy their expressive urges. Working in common with like-minded activists, they must somehow win the support of sufficient numbers of nonactivists. The resulting collectivity, composed of activists and nonactivists professing support for a particular cause, is called a pressu

Because the imperfect observability of private variables is a universal feature, we can expect to be surprised again and again.

The measure of collective 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 persistence to history.

“preference falsification”—the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures.

In the days following the fall of Czechoslovak communism, a banner in Prague read: “Poland—10 years, Hungary—10 months, East Germany—10 weeks, Czechoslovakia—10 days.”44 Underlying the implied acceleration is the fact that each successful challenge to communism lowered the perceived risk of dissent in the countries still under communist rule. This