Copycats & Contrarians

May 28, 2018
Economics professor Baddeley employs a multidisciplinary approach to tackling a key question about human behavior—why do some people go with the flow, and others buck societal conventions? In easy-to-understand prose, replete with accessible anecdotes (Baddeley opens with the mass outpouring of grief following the death of Princess Diana as an illustration of people’s “strong instincts to copy and conform”), she examines how economists, such as Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto, “link their assumptions about our capacity for rational choice with human social behavior.” But she moves beyond economics to incorporate recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology, arriving at nuanced answers; for example, not all conformity is bad, and there are “rational reasons to... look to the group, to copy and to herd.” Baddeley is a forceful advocate for the value of contrarians, and urges societies to make it easier for their members to take risks in advancing new ideas or theories. Her observations on how both risk-taking and conformism contributed to Donald Trump’s election, and on how social media affects “copycats,” make for a well-timed and valuable study.