Copycats & Contrarians: Why We Follow Others … and When We Don’t PDF
Preview Copycats & Contrarians: Why We Follow Others … and When We Don’t
Michelle Baddeley & COPYCATS Why We Follow Others CONTRARIANS … and When We Don’t ‘This might well become the defining book, for this decade and more, on the topic of herding and social influence.’ Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge COPYCATS AND CONTRARIANS i ii & COPYCATS CONTRARIANS Why We Follow Others . . . and When We Don’t Michelle Baddeley YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON iii Copyright © 2018 Michelle Baddeley All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940284 ISBN 978-0-300-22022-3 (hbk) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 iv To my parents, with gratitude v Let us boldly contemn all imitation, though it comes to us graceful and fragrant as the morning; and foster all originality, though, at first, it be crabbed and ugly as our own pine knots. Herman Melville, ‘Hawthorne and His Mosses’ (1850) Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) vi Contents Introduction 1 1 Clever copying 11 2 Mob psychology 41 3 Herding on the brain 72 4 Animal herds 97 5 Mavericks 128 6 Entrepreneurs versus speculators 153 7 Herding experts 187 8 Following the leader 218 Conclusion: Copycats versus contrarians 258 Endnotes 267 Further reading 293 Acknowledgements 299 Illustration credits 301 Index 302 vii viii Int ro duct ion On 6 September 1997, the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales attracted a crowd of over 3 million mourners in London, as well as a worldwide TV audience of almost 3 billion. The metres-d eep carpets of bouquets, poems, teddy bears and other sentimental offerings accumulating outside Buckingham Palace and Diana’s Kensington Palace home gave the twentieth century some of its most iconic images. Millions of strangers expressed extreme – if short-l ived – grief about the death of a person they had never met. Why did so many individual mourners feel deeply enough to join with millions of others in expressing their collective sadness? They joined together as a grief-s tricken herd, coordinated around the globe by interna- tional news media. This powerful mass hysteria seemed as unreasoning as it was uncontrollable. But was it? Our herding is not always histrionic. Our tendency to imitate, follow others and group together can be reasonable strategies to improve our lives and evolutionary life chances. Herding is an instinct we share with other animals too. Behavioural ecologists have observed clever copying behaviour amongst many of our close (and not so close) animal relatives. 1
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