by Hugo Mercier
see Cohen, 1985; Kitcher, 1993; Wootton, 2015.
23. Mercier & Sperber, 2017, chap. 17.
24. Mansbridge, 1999.
25. Cited, translated, and discussed in Galler, 2007.
26. Shtulman, 2006; Shtulman & Valcarcel, 2012.
27. Miton & Mercier, 2015.
28. Durbach, 2000, p. 52.
29. Elena Conis, “Vaccination Re sis tance in Historical Perspective,” The Ameri-
can Historian, http:// tah .oah .org / issue - 5 / vaccination - resistance/ (accessed July 17, 2018).
30. M. J. Smith, Ellenberg, Bel , & Rubin, 2008.
31. Boyer & Petersen, 2012, 2018; van Prooijen & Van Vugt, 2018.
280 no t es t o ch ap t er 5
CHAPTER 5
1. “ ‘Je devais al er à Bruxel es, je me suis retrouvée à Zagreb’: l’incroyable périple
en auto de Sabine, d’Erquelinnes,” Sudinfo, January 11, 2013, https:// www .sudinfo
. be / art / 640639 / article / regions / charleroi / actualite / 2013 - 01 - 11 / %C2%ABje - devais
- aller - a - bruxelles - je - me - suis - retrouvee - a - zagreb%C2%BB - l- incroyable - p.
2. E. J. Robinson, Champion, & Mitchell, 1999. For reviews of the enormous
amount of work done on how children evaluate testimony, see Clément, 2010; Har-
ris, 2012; Harris, Koenig, Corriveau, & Jaswal, 2018.
3. Castelain, Girotto, Jamet, & Mercier, 2016; Mercier, Bernard, & Clément, 2014;
Mercier, Sudo, Castelain, Bernard, & Matsui, 2018.
4. On how people who tell us things we agree with are deemed more trustworthy,
see Col ins, Hahn, von Gerber, & Olsson, 2018.
5. Choleris, Guo, Liu, Mainardi, & Valsecchi, 1997.
6. See Analytis, Barkoczi, & Herzog, 2018.
7. Malkiel & McCue, 1985; Taleb, 2005.
8. K. Hill & Kintigh, 2009.
9. Or fishing in small- scale socie ties, see Henrich & Broesch, 2011.
10. Howard, 1983; Sternberg, 1985. Neither is supported by much data.
11. This position is bolstered, for instance, by the weakness of transfer effects in
learning, a phenomenon already recognized by Thorndyke in the early twentieth
century: “The mind is so specialized into a multitude of in de pen dent capacities that
we alter human nature only in small spots” (1917, p. 246). For recent references, see
Sala et al., 2018; Sala & Gobet, 2017, 2018.
12. Kushnir, Vredenburgh, & Schneider, 2013; VanderBorght & Jaswal, 2009.
13. Keil, Stein, Webb, Bil ings, & Rozenblit, 2008; Lutz & Keil, 2002.
14. Stibbard- Hawkes, Attenborough, & Marlowe, 2018.
15. Brand & Mesoudi, 2018.
16. Huckfeldt, 2001, see also Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, &
Gaudet, 1948.
17. Kierkegaard, 1961, p. 106.
18. Mark Twain, The complete works of Mark Twain, p. 392, Archive .org, https://
archive .org / stream / completeworksofm22twai / completeworksofm22twai _ djvu .txt
(accessed July 19, 2018).
19. Mercier, Dockendorff, & Schwartzberg, submitted.
20. Condorcet, 1785.
21. Galton, 1907; see also Larrick & Sol , 2006. Galton actually used the median,
not the mean, because computing the mean would have been impossible by hand
(thanks to Emile Servan- Schreiber for pointing this out).
n o t e s t o c h a p t e r 6 281
22. Surowiecki, 2005.
23. Source for figure 2: https:// xkcd .com / 1170/ (accessed June 24, 2019).
24. Conradt & List, 2009; Conradt & Roper, 2003.
25. Strandburg- Peshkin, Farine, Couzin, & Crofoot, 2015.
26. Hastie & Kameda, 2005.
27. T.J.H. Morgan, Rendel , Ehn, Hoppitt, & Laland, 2012.
28. Mercier & Morin, 2019.
29. Mercier & Morin, 2019.
30. Dehaene, 1999.
31. For a review, see Mercier & Morin, 2019.
32. E.g., Maines, 1990.
33. Mercier & Miton, 2019.
34. J. Hu, Whalen, Buchsbaum, Griffiths, & Xu, 2015; but see Einav, 2017.
35. For a review, see Mercier & Morin, 2019.
36. See Friend et al., 1990; Griggs, 2015.
37. On the classic informational/normative conformity distinction, see Deutsch &
Gerard, 1955; for difficulties with it, see Hodges & Geyer, 2006. For similar results
with children, see Corriveau & Harris, 2010; Haun & Tomasello, 2011.
38. Allen, 1965, p. 143. Allen also reports experiments showing that people re-
vert to the correct answer when they are asked again, in the absence of the group.
39. Asch, 1956, p. 56.
40. Asch, 1956, p. 47.
41. Gallup, Chong, & Couzin, 2012; Gallup, Hale, et al., 2012.
42. Clément, Koenig, & Harris, 2004.
43. On competence, see Bernard, Proust, & Clément, 2015.
44. A great description of fool’s errands is provided by Umbres, 2018.
CHAPTER 6
1. DePaulo et al., 2003.
2. Freud, 1905, p. 94; cited in Bond, Howard, Hutchison, & Masip, 2013.
3. Qing China: Conner, 2000, p. 142; ancient India: Rocher, 1964, p. 346; Eu ro pean
Middle Ages: Ullmann, 1946; Robisheaux, 2009, p. 206; twentieth- century United
States: Underwood, 1995, pp. 622ff.
4. Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004, citing the textbook by Inbau, Reid, Buckley, &
Jayne, 2001.
5. E.g., Ekman, 2001, 2009.
6. Weinberger, 2010. For direct evidence that micro-expressions training doesn’t
work, see Jordan et al., in press.
282 no t es t o ch ap t er 6
7. Porter & ten Brinke, 2008.
8. ten Brinke, MacDonald, Porter, & O’Connor, 2012.
9. DePaulo, 1992.
10. DePaulo et al., 2003; Hartwig & Bond, 2011; Vrij, 2000.
11. Hartwig & Bond, 2011.
12. Honts & Hartwig, 2014, p. 40; see also Foerster, Wirth, Herbort, Kunde, & Pfis-
ter, 2017; Luke, in press; Raskin, Honts, & Kircher, 2013; Roulin & Ternes, 2019. More
recently, it has been shown that people cannot distinguish between actual emotional
screams and acted screams; Engelberg & Gouzoules, 2019.
13. For a review, see Bond & DePaulo, 2006; see also Bond, 2008.
14. Levine, 2014; see also Gilbert, 1991.
15. E.g., DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996. In other cultures, lying
is much more frequent, and, as a result, people are more attuned to the possibility of
lying (e.g., Gilsenan, 1976).
16. Reid, 1970, chap. 24.
17. See, e.g., Helen Klein Murillo, “The law of lying: Perjury, false statements, and
obstruction,” Lawfare, March 22, 2017, https:// www .lawfareblog .com / law - lying
- perjury - false - statements - and - obstruction.
18. To some extent, this means that there shouldn’t be strong pressures for people
to self- deceive (contra Simler & Hanson, 2017; von Hippel & Trivers, 2011). If bad in-
formation is punished about equally whether it was sent intentionally or not, there
is no need to self- deceive; see Mercier, 2011.
19. E.g., Birch & Bloom, 2007.
20. From the point of view of open vigilance, it is also worth noting that however
diligent we expect someone to be, at best this means their opinion will be deemed
as valuable as ours. It is only if we have other reasons to believe them— they are more
competent, they have good reasons— that we should go more than 50 percent of the
way toward what they tell us.
21. Sniezek, Schrah, & Dalal, 2004.
22. Gino, 2008.
23. Gendelman, 2013
.
24. In fact, the alignment of incentives prob ably played a crucial role only at the
beginning, while the mechanism I describe next takes over later as the main driver
of their cooperation and continued friendship.
25. Reyes- Jaquez & Echols, 2015.
26. This is likely why chimpanzees ignore pointing altogether: they assume that
the individual pointing is not cooperating but competing with them.
27. Mil s & Keil, 2005; see also Mil s & Keil, 2008.
28. Meissner & Kassin, 2002; Street & Richardson, 2015.
n o t e s t o c h a p t e r 7 283
29. The prob lem is compounded by the fact that knowing what other people’s in-
centives are is difficult. We are better off erring on the side of caution, believing, in
the absence of clear contrary evidence, their incentives not to be aligned with ours,
making communication even less likely.
30. Frank, 1988.
31. Technically, the opinion each potential interlocutor has of them. This might
be diff er ent from their reputation, which is a commonly agreed upon opinion toward
the speaker; Sperber & Baumard, 2012.
32. Boehm, 1999.
33. Baumard, André, & Sperber, 2013.
34. For a related point, see Shea et al., 2014.
35. Van Zant & Andrade, submitted.
36. Brosseau- Liard & Poulin- Dubois, 2014; see also, e.g., Matsui, Rakoczy, Miura,
& Tomasello, 2009. For results on adults, see Bahrami et al., 2010; Fusaroli et al., 2012;
Pulford, Colman, Buabang, & Krockow, 2018.
37. Tenney, MacCoun, Spellman, & Hastie, 2007; Tenney et al., 2008, 2011.
Some studies suggest that people do not adjust their trust in others as a function
of past overconfidence enough (Anderson, Brion, Moore, & Kennedy, 2012; J. A.
Kennedy, Anderson, & Moore, 2013). However, even these studies show a drop
in trust in overconfident speakers, and this drop would likely increase if speakers
kept on being overconfident (see Vullioud, Clément, Scott- Phillips, & Mercier,
2017).
38. Vul ioud et al., 2017. We also show that if people trust a speaker for reasons other
than the source expressing confidence, then they drop their trust in the speaker less
once the speaker is proven to have been mistaken.
39. Boehm, 1999; Chagnon, 1992; Safra, Baumard, & Chevallier, submitted.
40. E.g., Kam & Zechmeister, 2013; Keller & Lehmann, 2006.
41. Amos, Holmes, & Strutton, 2008.
42. Laustsen & Bor, 2017.
43. Amos et al., 2008.
44. Knittel & Stango, 2009.
45. On promises: e.g., Artés, 2013; Pomper & Lederman, 1980; Royed, 1996; on
corruption: Costas- Pérez, Solé- Ollé, & Sorribas- Navarro, 2012.
CHAPTER 7
1. Rankin & Philip, 1963, p. 167. What follows about Tanganyika is mostly based
on this paper; see also Ebrahim, 1968.
2. See, e.g., Evans & Bartholomew, 2009.
284 no t es t o ch ap t er 7
3. Susan Dominus, “What happened to the girls in Le Roy,” New York Times Maga-
zine, March 7, 2012, https:// www .nytimes .com / 2012 / 03 / 11 / magazine / teenage - girls
- twitching - le - roy .html.
4. Rankin & Philip, 1963, p. 167.
5. Le Bon, 1897.
6. Tarde, 1892, p. 373 (my translation).
7. Sighele, 1901, p. 48 (my translation).
8. See Warren & Power, 2015.
9. A. Brad Schwartz, “Orson Welles and history’s first viral- media event,” Vanity
Fair, April 27, 2015, https:// www .vanityfair .com / culture / 2015 / 04 / broadcast - hysteria
- orson - welles - war - of - the - worlds.
10. Moorehead, 1965, p. 226.
11. Coviello et al., 2014; Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014.
12. Canetti, 1981, p. 77.
13. Sighele, 1901, p. 190 (my translation).
14. Le Bon, 1900, p. 21 (my translation).
15. Lanzetta & Englis, 1989.
16. Dimberg, Thunberg, & Elmehed, 2000.
17. Dezecache et al., submitted.
18. Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994, p. 5.
19. Cited in Sighele, 1901, p. 59 (my translation); for a more recent reference, see
Moscovici, 1981.
20. Frank, 1988; Sel , Tooby, & Cosmides, 2009.
21. Burgess, 1839, p. 49.
22. Frank, 1988.
23. Indeed, this strategy seems to work; see Reed, DeScioli, & Pinker, 2014.
24. Frank, 1988, p. 121; see also Owren & Bachorowski, 2001.
25. Fodor, 1983.
26. More things are under conscious control than we often believe. Good ac-
tors can manipulate their facial expressions at will. Some people can even con-
sciously affect piloerection (Heathers, Fayn, Silvia, Tiliopoulos, & Goodwin,
2018).
27. Dezecache, Mercier, & Scott- Phil ips, 2013.
28. Tamis- LeMonda et al., 2008; see also G. Kim & Kwak, 2011.
29. Chiarel a & Poulin- Dubois, 2013; see also Chiarel a & Poulin- Dubois 2015.
30. Hepach, Vaish, & Tomasello, 2013.
31. Lanzetta & Englis, 1989.
32. Zeifman & Brown, 2011.
33. Hofman, Bos, Schutter, & van Honk, 2012.
34. Weisbuch & Ambady, 2008; see also Han, 2018.
n o t e s t o c h a p t e r 7 285
35. For more references, see Dezecache et al., 2013; Norscia & Palagi, 2011.
36. Campagna, Mislin, Kong, & Bottom, 2016.
37. On how poor the analogy is, see Warren & Power, 2015.
38. Crivel i & Fridlund, 2018.
39. McPhail, 1991; see O. Morin, 2016.
40. A similar point is made by “Beyond contagion: Social identity pro cesses in in-
voluntary social influence,” Crowds and Identities: John Drury’s Research Group, Uni-
versity of Sussex, http:// www .sussex .ac .uk / psychology / crowdsidentities / projects
/ beyondcontagion (accessed July 20, 2018).
41. This section relies on Boss, 1997.
42. Dominus, “What happened to the girls in Le Roy.”
43. Evans & Bartholomew, 2009, see also Ong, 1987; Boss, 1997, p. 237.
44. Lopez- Ibor, Soria, Canas, & Rodriguez- Gamazo, 1985, p. 358.
45. Couch, 1968; Drury, Novel i, & Stott, 2013; McPhail, 1991; Schweingruber &
Wohlstein, 2005.
46. Taine, 1885 book 1, chap. V.
47. Rudé, 1959.
48. Barrows, 1981.
49. Barrows, 1981.
50. E.g., J. Barker, 2014; more generally, see Hernon, 2006.
51. Cited in White, 2016.
52. Klarman, 2016.
53. Wang, 1995, p. 72.
54. Taine, 1876, p. 241.
55. McPhail, 1991, in par tic u lar pp. 44ff.; Tilly & Tilly, 1975.
56. If, moreover, there is a gradation in how many people already behaving
badly it takes to allow someone to behave badly, then the phenomenon looks like
a cascade of influence, when in fact no (direct) influence takes place at all; see
Granovetter, 1978.
57. Here, I rely on Dezecache, 2015, and Mawson, 2012, in par tic u lar pp. 234ff.
58. Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Sokolow, “The myth of the War of the Worlds
panic,” October 28, 2013, Slate, http:// www .slate .com / articles / arts / history / 2013 / 10
/ orson _ wel es _ war _ of _ the _ worlds _ panic _ myth _ the _ infamous _ radio _ broadcast
_ did .html. See also Lagrange, 2005.
59. Janis, 1951.
60. Schultz, 1964.
61. Proulx, Fahy, & Walker, 2004.
62. Dezecache et
al., submitted.
63. Dezecache et al., submitted; see also Johnson, 1988.
64. R. H. Turner & Kil ian, 1972.
286 no t es t o ch ap t er 8
65. McPhail, 2007.
66. Aveni, 1977; Johnson, Feinberg, & Johnston, 1994; McPhail & Wohlstein, 1983.
67. See references in Mawson, 2012, pp. 143ff.
CHAPTER 8
1. This chapter and the next draw on Mercier, 2017. The “worst enemies” is from
Signer, 2009.
2. Signer, 2009, pp. 40–41.
3. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, http:// classics.mit .edu
/ Thucydides / pelopwar .mb .txt (accessed November 23, 2018).
4. See “Mytilenean revolt,” Wikipedia, https:// en .wikipedia .org / wiki / Mytilenean
_ revolt (accessed November 23, 2018).
5. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, 3.37, http:// classics.mit .edu
/ Thucydides / pelopwar .mb .txt (accessed November 23, 2018).
6. Republic, Book VIII, 565a, trans. Jowett; see also 488d, http:// classics.mit.edu
/Plato/republic.9.vi i.html (accessed November 23, 2018).
7. “Cleon,” in Wil iam Smith (Ed.), A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and
my thol ogy, http:// www .perseus .tufts .edu / hopper / text ? doc = Perseus:text:1999 .04
. 0104:entry = cleon - bio - 1 (accessed November 23, 2018).
8. “Cleon.”
9. Whedbee, 2004.
10. See in par tic u lar Kershaw, 1983b.
11. Kershaw, 1987; see also Kershaw, 1983b, 1991.
12. Kershaw, 1987, p. 46.
13. Kershaw, 1987, p. 46.
14. Selb & Munzert, 2018, p. 1050
15. Kershaw, 1987, pp. 61, 123; see also Voigtländer & Voth, 2014.
16. Kershaw, 1987, p. 146.
17. Kershaw, 1987, pp. 187–188.
18. Kershaw, 1987, pp. 194ff.
19. Kershaw, 1987, p. 147.
20. Kershaw, 1987, pp. 233ff.
21. See, e.g., Wang, 1995, for Mao.
22. This analogy is developed in Watts, 2011, pp. 96–97.
23. This account is drawn from Peires, 1989.
24. Peires, 1989, location 2060–2062.
25. Peires, 1989, location 363–365.
26. Peires, 1989, locations 1965–1966, 1921–1923.
27. Peires, 1989, location 1923–1927.
n o t e s t o c h a p t e r 8 287
28. Peires, 1989, location 4257–4262.
29. Peires, 1989, location 4262–4264.
30. Peires, 1989, locations 2550–2552, 2078–2081.
31. Peires, 1989, location 3653–3657.
32. Peires, 1989, locations 2524–2526, 3672–3676.
33. Peires, 1989, locations 3699–3700, 4369–4370.
