Kuran is currently a Professor of Economics at Duke University. He proposes a theory of “preference falsification, the act of misrepresenting one’s genuine wants under perceived social pressures…. Preference falsification aims specifically at manipulating the perceptions others hold about one’s motivations or dispositions…. A phrase that captures the meaning of preference falsification exactly is “living a lie.”… If one distinguishing characteristic of preference falsification is that it brings discomfort to the falsifier, another is that it is a response to real or imagined social pressures to convey a particular preference.” Kuran proposes that preference falsification is ubiquitous, both in totalitarian regimes and in democracies. He suggests that “to acknowledge the universality of preference falsification would call into serious question some of the alleged virtues of democracy.” However, “the proclivity to engage in preference falsification depends crucially on the institutional context.” Preference falsification occurs when an individual wants to appear to be in step with public opinion. However, “insofar as we overrate the genuineness of public opinion, we will overestimate its permanence and adapt more readily to its apparent shifts. Therefore public opinion may be very sensitive to signs that it is in flux.” Public opinion also exerts pressures well beyond what might be legally permissible in a society. “The pressure of public opinion may make minorities refrain from exercising their constitutional rights to dissent. As a practical matter, institutional checks and balances do not even guarantee that majorities will exercise their expressive rights. Even without government coercion, majorities might submit to the wishes of vociferous minorities. Protections against government tyranny do not prevent societies from tyrannizing themselves through the force of public opinion.”
Even when private opinions do change, there is a tendency not to reveal those altered preferences publicly because of status quo bias. “”Individuals would rather not be the first to challenge the status quo. Under the prevailing reputational incentives, people will not switch for fear that others will not…. Public opinion may thus outlive the circumstances that created it…. Individuals preserve an established public opinion in trying to be prudent—in endeavoring, that is, to select their public preferences at least partly on the basis of reputational incentives inferred from the history of public opinion…. When large numbers of people conceal their misgivings about the status quo, individuals may consider their own disenchantments exceptional…. Through preference falsification, they may thus hold in place structures that they could, if only they acted together, easily change.” Kuran observes that this also can lead to inefficient outcomes. “Preference falsification is itself a form of free riding, for it is undertaken to avoid the personal cost of achieving a desirable social outcome. As such, it is another basic source of inefficiency…. Where preference falsification differs from Olsonian free riding is that both its practice and its consequences may remain hidden.”
Public opinion also can, over time, shift actual private beliefs. “By transferring beliefs from the realm of the thinkable to that of the unthinkable, social pressures induce the withdrawal of those beliefs from public discourse. The consequent reconstruction of public discourse distorts private knowledge. In particular, it makes people progressively less conscious of the disadvantages of what is publicly favored and increasingly more conscious of the advantages. As a result, private opinion moves against the publicly unfavored alternatives. Having lessened their public popularity, preference falsification thus ends up also lessening their private popularity…. The status quo, once sustained because people were afraid to challenge it, will thus come to persist because no one understands its flaws or can imagine a better alternative. Preference falsification will have brought intellectual narrowness and ossification.”
Public preferences can shift rapidly once information reaches certain breaking points and perceptions snowball. “Neither private preferences nor the corresponding thresholds are common knowledge. A society can therefore come to the brink of a revolution without anyone realizing this, not even those with the power to unleash it…. [However,] widespread antipathy toward the government is not sufficient to mobilize large numbers for revolutionary action…. If the opposition is minuscule, the expected cost of revolting is immense…. By the same token, a revolution may break out in a society where private preferences, and therefore individual thresholds, tend to be relatively favorable to the government. It is necessary only for additions to the opposition to trigger further defections from the government’s ranks. In other words, the threshold sequence must form a bandwagon that is mobile at the prevailing public opposition…. In reality, a revolutionary bandwagon may help create the discontent that keeps it in motion…. Not only is mass discontent inessential to start a revolution, but the early movers need not be among society’s most disaffected members…. A nineteenth-century socialist is reputed to have exclaimed to a friend handing coins to a beggar: “Don’t delay the revolution!””
However much events have catalysts, social outcomes cannot be mass managed, planned, or preordained. “First, insofar as social outcomes result from interaction among individual actions, collective responses, and preexisting social structures, no person or group will deserve full credit for an unfolding outcome. Observed social outcomes are bound to be unconstructed. Second, no one can reliably imagine all long-term consequences of any given choice. There will be social outcomes that were unintended…. The spread of new ideas is determined partly, if not substantially, by the diverse communications that form ordinary public discourse. Neither these communications nor the consequent development of public discourse can be controlled with precision…. Social evolution is influenced by chance and contingency, in addition, of course, to genuine desires.”
It is important to note that Kuran’s theory of preference falsification is normatively neutral. “One can recognize the role of preference falsification in an ideology’s dissemination without having to pass judgment on the ideology. Conversely, one can praise or criticize an ideology without losing sight of its dependence on preference falsification.”
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