Todd Rose - Collective Illusions

Copyright 2022 by Todd Rose

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First Edition: February 2022

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947540

ISBNs: 9780306925689 (hardcover), 9780306925702 (ebook)

E3-20211210-JV-NF-ORI

CONTENTS

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To Parisa Rouhanithe most congruent person I know

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The real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?

VCLAV HAVEL

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

SENECA

THE CHARMING FAKE lighthouse attached to the post office in Eaton, New York, is a remnant of once-upon-a-time days when the building was the Tower Gas Station. Painted with an eye-catching red-and-white helix that recalls a barbers pole, the two-story tower peers out over a small town of a few thousand people, set deep in the green belly button of New York State. Almost a century ago, it stood silent witness to one of the most important public opinion studies that youve never heard of.

In 1928, a doctoral student from Syracuse University named Richard Schanck came to live in this village. One of the very first researchers in the brand-new field of social psychology, Schanck sought to conduct a study of how people, as individuals, form their opinions. He chose Eaton (in his 128-page PhD dissertation, he called it Elm Hollow) because it was a small, tight-knit religious community, remote from the complexities of city life, where everyone knew everyone. As in all tiny towns, neighbors in Elm Hollow scrutinized each other zealously. The gossips kept careful tabs on everyone. If a child walking home from school picked an apple from a neighbors tree or a man stumbled on a root while hurrying home late at night, someone was bound to notice.

The people of Elm Hollow understood that Schanck was there to study their social behavior, but it didnt take long for them to treat the big-city academic and his wife as their own. In the course of their three years in the village, the Schancks came to befriend Elm Hollows residents, embedding themselves into the community. Since the couple attended church every Sunday, they were invited to baptisms, weddings, and funerals, as well as into peoples homes for intimate dinners.

Schanck wrote down his observations of the townspeoples behavior in a notebook he carried around with him. He queried them about proper public comportmentparticularly their views on the various social prohibitions issued from the pulpit. Should baptism be done by immersion or sprinkling? he inquired. Is it acceptable to go to the theater on Sundays? Is it okay to play games with face cards? (a prohibition originating from a Puritan hatred of British royalty and its dirty penchant for gambling). Publicly, the response was nearly unanimous: the vast majority of those he surveyed agreed that even playing games with face cards, such as bridge, was off limits.

But after his first year in Elm Hollow, Schanck realized that Elm Hollowites werent quite the same people they pretended to be at church and elsewhere. For example, despite what they professed in public, Schanck reported that hed personally drank, smoked, and played face card games with most adults in Elm Hollow in the privacy of their own homes. This hypocrisy puzzled Schanck: Why in the world would most people in a community say they disapprove of things that they clearly had no problem doing?

In his private discussions with them, Schanck pressed his new friends to level with him. Attempting to understand the cause of this disconnect, he asked them a question whose answer would forever change how we think about public opinionone that would lead directly to this book.

What, he asked, do you think most people in this community would say about smoking, drinking, and bridge playing?

Most people, came the reply, would say that those are very sinful activities.

For instance, a whopping 77 percent of Elm Hollowites told Schanck that while they themselves had no problem playing with face cards, they believed most people in their community were in favor of the strict prohibition against doing so. But they had no idea that they were actually members of a silent majority. Nearly three-quarters of them indulged in the exact same vices, but they all kept it secret. Even Mr. Fagson, a young, outspoken Baptist minister who pushed a strong fundamentalist position in public, was in fact a staunch, bridge-playing liberal in private.

Similar schisms emerged when Schanck asked the villagers about a range of other religious and secular issues, including whether or not they should build a new high school with the neighboring community (a particularly heated debate that led to fisticuffs). Puzzling over these weird gaps between public and private opinion, Schanck concluded that the people adopted just enough of the majority stance to be seen as acceptable members of the town. But why would they adhere to norms that they individually and collectively disliked? And how could the people of this small town be so utterly wrong about each other?

Thats when he learned about the cultural grip of a dowager widow named Mrs. Salt. Because her father had previously presided as the minister of young Mr. Fagsons church, Mrs. Salt claimed to embody that institutions history and ethics. Since she was also its largest donor, Mr. Fagson depended on her for a paycheck.

Mrs. Salt managed to hold the townspeople in her iron grip for a full generation. Through the sheer strength of her personality, she dictated what one did and did not say in public. Inasmuch as Mrs. Salt is a vigorous woman and in the habit of giving her views on a subject considerable public expression, Schanck wrote, people frequently [hear] this oracle of the church expound her opinions [and] accept her views as typical of the group without critical enumeration of just how many believe as she.

When the old woman passed away, however, things started to change. One night shortly afterward, the seemingly fundamentalist minister and his wife participated in a bridge party where they publicly played with face cards. This phenomenon kicked off a wave of gossip that spread through Elm Hollow like wildfire. If the minister played bridge, who else did? As they talked, people confessed to one another that they too were okay with playing with face cards, which led them to wonder out loud what else they had been wrong about. And with that, the spell was broken.

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