Copycats & Contrarians: Why We Follow Others … and When We Don’t

323 Pages·2018·6.919 MB·English

by  Michelle Baddeley

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
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&
COPYCATS
CONTRARIANS
Why We Follow Others
. . . and When We Don’t
Michelle Baddeley
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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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:
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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.
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To my parents, with gratitude
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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)
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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
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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.
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