Conformity: The Power of Social Influences — Cass Sunstein

A brilliant mind brings fresh perspective to a well-researched phenomenon

Cass Sunstein is many things. He is a lawyer, a Harvard professor, formerly the Administer of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Obama, and he is a bestselling author (The World According to Star Wars). How I first was introduced to Cass Sunstein, however, was in his collaboration with Nobel-Prize-winner Richard Thaler in their brilliant 2008 book, Nudge. That book contains a tremendous amount of research in the field of behavioral economics, a favorite of mine because it is a hybrid of the most interesting (to me) aspects of psychology and economics.

Given that, my response was two-fold when I saw that Sunstein was writing about conformity. I was, of course, overwhelmingly excited because Sunstein is a brilliant mind and conformity is another of my favorite topics in psychology. However, I was also wondering how Sunstein could say anything more than many others have (most notably Stanley Milgram, a titan in the field and author of Obedience to Authority).

My worries were misplaced. Sunstein has written something that, despite its relatively-diminutive size, only he could have written. Only someone with as diverse a background as…