Social Proof and Mimetic Desire

Crowd manias from the Mississippi scheme and South Sea Bubble to witch trials.

How individuals lose judgement in a crowd and how leaders sway crowds.

Why mass movements of every kind draw the same frustrated people and use one method.

Financial crises follow a repeated sequence of boom, mania, panic and crash.

Six principles of compliance, from reciprocity to scarcity, and how sellers use them.

Speculation from ancient Rome and tulip mania to the 1990s, and its recurring traits.

How psychology, not fundamentals, drove the stock and housing booms of 2000 and 2005.

When groups judge better than experts, and the four conditions that make it work.

Techniques for handling people, being liked and winning others to your view.

Mimetic rivalry, where rivals grow alike, and the violence it unleashes in societies.

Preference falsification: why people hide their views and how that hides change.

Where you direct attention just before a message shapes how it is received.

Common knowledge, where everyone knows that everyone knows, and what it does.

Girard reading Dostoevsky; mimetic rivalry and resentment

Common knowledge and coordination; why rituals and advertising work

Cialdini's persuasion research condensed into fifty applied findings