Preference Falsification

When People Don't Say What They Think

In recent decades, one of the most important ideas in social science has been developed and elaborated by Duke University economist Timur Kuran: preference falsification.

The basic idea is that people don’t always say what they prefer (or believe). As Kuran explains, preference falsification is one reason that large-scale social movements can be hard to anticipate. See the French Revolution, the Arab Spring, the election of Barack Obama, the election of Donald Trump, or the fall of affirmative action.

Here are a few examples:

1. I have a friend who was confirmed by the Senate for a government job a few years ago. A Senator whom she knew voted against her. She was surprised. She asked him, “Why did you vote against me?” He wrote back: “Let’s just say that more people supported you than voted for you.”

2. I was myself up for Senate confirmation during the Obama administration. A Republican senator put a hold on my nomination, which prevented me from even getting a vote. After a long time, he agreed to meet with me. His first words to me: “For that job you’ve been nominated for, we need a law professor. Someone who knows some economics. Someone who taught administrative law. Someone who has lost some hair. Someone who plays squash and tennis. Someone who has studied human behavior.” (He basically read my biography.). I responded, “I have a brother like that.” He said, “You’re going to be great for the job. Of course I’m voting against you.”

3. In the last few weeks, I have been in a number of conversations in which people have said, “I never liked that DEI stuff. It’s dumb. Of course I couldn’t say so until now.”

4. Speaking of the views of ordinary people under Hitler, a former Nazi asked, “Opposition? How would anybody know? How would anybody know what somebody else opposes or doesn’t oppose? That a man says he opposes or doesn’t oppose depends upon the circumstances, where, and when, and to whom, and just how he says it. And then you must still guess why he says what he says.”

Kuran’s starting point is that people often silence themselves, or say something different from what they actually think. because of fear of social opprobrium. See (1), (2), and (4) above. As a result, it can be hard or even impossible to know what people actually think. See (4) above.

It can also be hard or even impossible to know the circumstances that would lead people to reveal their actual preferences. But sometimes, a red light starts to turn yellow: People see that others think as they do, and that they will incur less opprobrium than they expected. And sometimes a yellow light starts to turn green: What was a social tax on saying what one thinks is eliminated, or even turns into a subsidy. See (3) above.