REVIEW BY KEVIN BALDEOSINGH
This book is an argument on the virtue of disagreement. “We have, I believe, given far too little attention to the dangers of conformity and agreement itself,” writes legal scholar and prolific author Cass Sunstein.
This seems counter-intuitive – surely agreement between people and groups leads to better outcomes than disagreement? But Sunstein cites some examples of behaviour which arises from the instinct to agree with peers, which include teenage girls being more likely to get pregnant if they notice other teens having children; violent crime rising if the community is perceived to be violent; and lower courts following one another’s lead, hence perpetuating judicial error.
Although his example are drawn mainly from American studies, the findings may well be relevant to issues in T&T, as these very examples imply. For instance, although America’s judicial system is different from ours, Sunstein’s survey of how decisions are influenced by whether the judge was appointed by a Republican or Democratic president has resonance here. “Group influence creates ideological amplification,” he writes, “so that a judge’s ideological inclinations are amplified by sitting with two other judges appointed by a president of the same political party...judges are highly vulnerable to the influence of one another [and] a panel of three like-minded judges tends to go to extremes.”
But this is just one relatively minor part of Sunstein’s overall argument. In the nine chapters of his book, he examines conformity, rule of law, herding behaviour among humans, public opinion and, of course, free speech.
“Organisations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Well-functioning societies benefit from a wide range of views...” It must be emphasised that a wide range of views does not automatically arise from a large number of groups. “The topic is diversity of views, not diversity based on gender, race, or religion,” writes Sunstein.
He asserts that promoting and managing dissent (“managing” in the sense, not of censorship, but in ensuring fair hearing of myriad viewpoints) impacts on many essential issues, ranging from corporate success to crime to terrorism. “Many dissenters are speaking nonsense, and what they say is unhelpful or even harmful,” Sunstein admits. “What we want to encourage is not dissent as such but reasonable dissent, or dissent of the right kind.”
In this regard, Sunstein emphasises three basic points: (1) Confident people are influential and can lead identical groups in very different directions; (2) A single dissenter or voice of sanity can prevent people being vulnerable to unanimous views of others; (3) People are less influenced by those they consider different from them and moreso by those they consider alike. He also defines two types of dissenters: disclosers and contrarians. The former is useful, because their disagreement is based on information; the latter may or may not be, because their reputation as contrarians may cause people to automatically dismiss their views.
Sunstein’s arguments are backed up by psychological research, his arguments are made succinctly and in a clear and conversational prose style. Policy-makers and business leaders will find much that is useful in this book
More info
Why Societies Need Dissent
Cass Sunstein.
Harvard University Press, 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0674017689; 256 pages.