Michelle Baddeley
COPYCATS& Why We Follow Others
CONTRARIANS … and When We Don’t
‘This might well become the defining book, for this decade and more, on the topic of herding and social influence.’ Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge
C O PYC AT S AN D C O N T RAR IAN S
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COPYCATS & CONTRARIANS Why We Follow Others . . . and When We Don’t
Michelle Baddeley
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON iii
Copyright © 2018 Michelle Baddeley All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office:
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[email protected] yalebooks.co.uk Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940284 ISBN 978-0-300-22022-3 (hbk) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To my parents, with gratitude
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Let us boldly contemn all imitation, though it comes to us graceful and fragrant as the morning; and foster all originality, though, at first, it be crabbed and ugly as our own pine knots. Herman Melville, ‘Hawthorne and His Mosses’ (1850) Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
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Contents
Introduction 1 1 Clever copying 11 2 Mob psychology 41 3 Herding on the brain 72 4 Animal herds 97 5 Mavericks 128 6 Entrepreneurs versus speculators 153 7 Herding experts 187 8 Following the leader 218 Conclusion: Copycats versus contrarians 258 Endnotes 267 Further reading 293 Acknowledgements 299 Illustration credits 301 Index 302
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Introduction
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n 6 September 1997, the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales attracted a crowd of over 3 million mourners in London, as well as a worldwide TV audience of almost 3 billion. The metres-deep carpets of bouquets, poems, teddy bears and other sentimenta