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

Preference falsification is thus a prime reason why accounts of revolution, whether journalistic or scholarly, typically give revolutions the appearance of inevitability, even when they seemed anything but inevitable until they occurred. Preference falsification contributes, in other words, to making our hindsight better than our foresight.

Where differences fascinate, says Stephen Jay Gould, generalities instruct.

A phrase that captures the meaning of preference falsification exactly is “living a lie.”

The principle of tolerance amounts, then, to a recognition that it has become prohibitively costly to control public opinion in every possible context. This interpretation is consistent with the common observation that cities, whose residents remain unknown to most other residents, exhibit greater tolerance than small towns, where everyone knows ev

For another example, since about 1970 the U.S. government has promoted, against the consistently strong opposition of private opinion, race-based employment and admission quotas. As will be explained in Chapter 9, quotas have spread and survived because of highly favorable public opinion.

When a revolution challenges many established beliefs, the ones to succumb first may thus be those that had enjoyed the greatest protection from public challenges.

Protections against government tyranny do not prevent societies from tyrannizing themselves through the force of public opinion.

Another explanation, by George Stigler, stresses the heterogeneity of the potential participants in a movement. People with individualized needs join the movement to gain a voice in shaping its demands. For example, a producer of pajamas contributes to a movement pursuing an import tariff on clothing to ensure that pajamas get included among the pr

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.”