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A review by rbruehlman
Conformity: The Power of Social Influences by Cass R. Sunstein
3.0
Meh, underwhelming.
The problem with a lot of pop psychology books is that they explore fairly intuitive concepts, so most of the facts presented are "hm, that makes logical sense, could have told you that" instead of "wow, I never knew that!" This book is no exception to this rule. Granted, I already knew about most of the experiments in the book, but, all the same, I didn't really feel like I learned anything new or had my thinking challenged in any kind of way.
That might just be a function of pop psychology, in which case it's not the book's fault. But I also don't think the book did anything interesting with the studies? Like, I would have enjoyed reading about how conformism played out in Nazi Germany, or in the Soviet Bloc, or cults, or internet communities like Facebook. But the author really never branches out beyond a few seminal well-known experiments and explores anything historical. Yes, he does talk some about the US judicial system, but, even at that, it felt cursory. I also just don't think exploring the US judicial system was nearly as interesting as exploring conformity and cults or extremist political parties would have been...
The problem with a lot of pop psychology books is that they explore fairly intuitive concepts, so most of the facts presented are "hm, that makes logical sense, could have told you that" instead of "wow, I never knew that!" This book is no exception to this rule. Granted, I already knew about most of the experiments in the book, but, all the same, I didn't really feel like I learned anything new or had my thinking challenged in any kind of way.
That might just be a function of pop psychology, in which case it's not the book's fault. But I also don't think the book did anything interesting with the studies? Like, I would have enjoyed reading about how conformism played out in Nazi Germany, or in the Soviet Bloc, or cults, or internet communities like Facebook. But the author really never branches out beyond a few seminal well-known experiments and explores anything historical. Yes, he does talk some about the US judicial system, but, even at that, it felt cursory. I also just don't think exploring the US judicial system was nearly as interesting as exploring conformity and cults or extremist political parties would have been...