[Music]
I'd like to start with a quotation quite
recent from a computer programmer from
Syria when you meet somebody coming out
of Syria for the first time you start to
hear the same sentences that everything
is okay it'll take like six months up to
one year to become a normal human being
for him to say what he thinks what he
feels then he might start whispering he
won't speak loudly much of what I have
to say is captured in that passage I'm
going to tell you a tale that relates to
my larger themes that isn't a quotation
but that's research from Saudi Arabia
the background is that by custom in
Saudi Arabia women aren't in the labor
force unless their husbands say it's
okay in the research it was found that
young Saudi men believed overwhelmingly
that it's completely fine if their wives
are working that is their private
judgment at the same time young Saudi
men believe that other young Saudi men
think it's not at all fine
their private judgment departs from
their assessment of what the social norm
is in the experiment
Saudi men young man we're told actually
most people like you think it's
completely fine when young Saudi men
were informed of what other young Saudi
men actually think they started saying
publicly including to their spouses
please go work and job applications
skyrocketed the Saudi research and the
Syrian quotation are the same they're
stories of social change coming either
in a hurry or slowly as a result of an
unleashing of private judgment
unleashing which comes from the
softening of social norms I want to
stress the unexpected often shocking
nature of successful social movements
no one sees them coming lemon was
stunned by the success and speed of the
Russian Revolution now pause over that
Lenin an architect of the Russian
Revolution had no idea that it would
work
Tocqueville the greatest authority on
the French Revolution tells us nobody
saw the French Revolution before it
happened more recently the Iranian
Revolution of 1979 was wholly
unanticipated the participants had no
idea it could work
more recently still the Arab Spring was
anticipated by the best analysts in the
United Kingdom and the United States and
the best analysts in the United Kingdom
of the United States are really good
they had no idea the Arab Spring was
about to come it's puzzling but true
that large movements including some that
were in the midst of and revolutions
seemed to come in waves they spread
within countries and from one country to
another for reasons that remain
mysterious its characteristic of modern
social science to speak of contagion
effects but I wonder if that isn't a
metaphor rather than an explanation it's
not literally contagious it's not like
the flu it's contagious in some
metaphorical sets so what does it even
mean to say that a social movement is
contagious I'm gonna try to approach
these questions okay for moving parts in
this approach the first is preference
falsification by which people often do
not say what their inner self is crying
out that's the story from Syria the
second moving part is diverse thresholds
the third is interdependencies which is
not about sentiment
and Christmas but instead about how what
we do and think is a product of what
other people say in do and think and the
fourth and final moving part is group
polarization which helps explain how
like-minded people go to extremes with
respect to preference falsification most
of us have a bunch of thoughts inside
our heads with respect to our workplace
our town our family our country that we
tell nobody about some of those inner
thoughts we might be ambivalent about
and think they're probably wrong some of
them carry clear conviction but as in
the case of the Syrian computer
programmer at most we will whisper them
we falsify into the public domain will
we think privately second point is that
different thresholds for action means
that for some of us injustice and we're
there if we see something awful we will
say something or do something instantly
others have high thresholds they have to
be really aroused with respect to
interdependencies the suggestion is that
most of us are reactive to what other
people say and do if one person is doing
something calling for social change X or
Y or Z we might think crazy person if a
thousand people are we might think why
didn't I join them yesterday many
movements are not only about the
revelation of suppressed preferences
experience beliefs and values they're
also about the transformation of all of
those things so what we observe in
addition to unleashing is altering
pre-existing beliefs any social movement
casts a new light on past experiences
and tells it to new narrative about them
it doesn't merely elicit pre-existing
judgments it produces novel ones part of
the move success of social movements
that accomplished what they aim to is to
turn a sense of embarrassment and shame
into a sense of dignity
[Applause]
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