"In Conversation" Series
Lecturer:
Prof. Cass Sunstein (Harvard)
Title:
Spirals of Silence
Abstract:
People often judge how embarrassing an activity or condition is in part by asking how prevalent they deem it to be. They infer prevalence in part from how often they hear other people discussing it. But how often a condition is discussed is a function not only of its prevalence, but also of how embarrassing it is. If people fail to take account of the impact of embarrassment on frequency of discussion, they will tend to underestimate the prevalence of embarrassing conditions, which will accentuate their embarrassment and, in turn, further amplify their reluctance to discuss those conditions. We present results from two studies that support these claims. In the first, cross-sectional survey study, people were asked a series of questions about different activities and conditions, chosen so that half were embarrassing and half were not. We asked respondents (1) to indicate whether they had the relevant conditions or engaged in the relevant behaviors, and then, for a subset of conditions, (2) to judge how embarrassing each condition was, (3) to report whether they had, or would, discuss it with others, and, critically, (4) to estimate what fraction of survey respondents have the conditions. As predicted, reports of disclosure were negatively related to average rating of, and to respondents’ own ratings of, embarrassment. In addition, estimates of prevalence were decreasing in embarrassment after controlling for actual prevalence. That is, participants tended to underestimate (or overestimate less) things they collectively rated as embarrassing. Respondents exhibited these patterns both for conditions that they had and for conditions that they did not have. In the second, experimental study, we manipulated whether people received a high or low estimate of population prevalence for 5 different conditions and situations. As predicted, receiving a high estimate reduced embarrassment associated with a condition and increased willingness to disclose the condition to others. Taken together, these studies support the idea that people tend to be excessively embarrassed about conditions they have, because embarrassment leads to low disclosure, which in turn leads people to judge the condition as rare (which, in turn, increases embarrassment).
Location:
Join the Zoom Meeting:
https://huji.zoom.us/j/87413206126?pwd=SxOLfCwo8l2MZoEvTUG3miaqJnPKHd.1
Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. 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. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.
Prof. Sunstein is author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), #Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), Too Much Information (2020), Decisions About Decisions (2023), How to Become Famous (2024), Campus Free Speech (2024), Climate Change Justice (forthcoming 2025), and On Manipulation (2025).