Collective Illusions: Todd Rose

Todd Rose begins his book with the story of Elm Hollow, researched by Richard Schanck almost a century ago.

A village in New York State, Elm Hollow had a clear puritan ethic. Residents told Schanck that they thought drinking, smoking, and playing card games using face cards - resonant of British royalty - were all sinful. But as Schank got to know the villagers better, he discovered that many of them secretly engaged in these "vices". Fully 77% of those he interviewed said they had no problems playing card games such as bridge themselves, but believed that most of the rest of the community thought this was sinful, so they kept very quiet about their card playing habit.

The collective illusion in which almost everyone in the village believed, mostly wrongly, that everyone else in the village was against playing cards collapsed very suddenly. When the grand dame of the village died, people became more open about playing cards, and the illusion broke, like a dam with small crack that explosively expanded.

Rose also finds research from the coal mining industry in 1970. Few miners were taking advantage of the free x-rays to uncover "black lung", a serious and well-known occupational hazard for miners. They feared they would be fired so employers could evade legal liability. Although 95% of supervisors thought miners would be comfortable reporting health and safety violations, only 20% of miners told researchers they would actually be comfortable doing so.

This is likely to remain an issue in crisis management today. It is not just about health and safety issues, or environmental breaches, but diversity and sexual harassment. Almost any issue leaves managers open to the same complacency - the same collective illusion - that mine supervisors faced in 1970. All Fortune 100 companies now have diversity policies. But do employees believe that managers are really committed to them? Do they even know about them? Only externally validated audits can uncover this.

A box-ticking diversity and harassment policy, which employees are not using, will not be effective in protecting your reputation or mitigating your liability. A policy needs to exist, not just on the HR Director's shelf, but in the confidence of employees to speak out.

Stories like these set me thinking about the collective illusions we have seen collapse in more recent years and on a much bigger stage. Some 20 years ago, there was an overwhelming consensus in the US against gay marriage. Large majorities of Democrats and almost all Republicans and independents told pollsters and, when given the chance, voted in initiatives against the practice. Liberal states such as California and Washington voted it down - twice, in California's case. Democratic candidates for high office, such as John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton denounced the idea. Some leading Republicans favored a constitutional amendment to deny recognition to any gay marriage consecrated in a liberal state. For some years, the only states that allowed gay marriage did so under court mandate, with popular and legislative votes all going against the idea.

Then the Supreme Court chimed in, and suddenly gay marriage was available everywhere. Now, almost all Democrats and large numbers of Republicans support the concept. It is broadly popular, and only a handful of states would outlaw it, even if the Supreme Court gave them that option. How did a strong consensus against the practice become a strong consensus in favor in just a few years?

Probably, the collective illusions that Rose writes about in his book are part of the answer. People who had no particular feelings about the issue spoke, and voted, against the idea because they thought almost everyone else was against it.

Yes, there are many other factors. President Obama personally moved the needle, especially among African American voters, when he publicly changed his mind on the issue. Many of the older voters who have died in the last twenty years were of a generation that never spoke publicly about gay people at all, except perhaps to make cruel jokes. Younger people who have joined the electorate have no such background. But it seems certain that many of the people who have changed their minds were going along with what they, wrongly, believed was a near universal view.

In a conversational style, Rose explores many other examples of these collective illusions, but his work is informed by a clear understanding of the sociology and neurology that underpins this phenomenon.

Understanding these collective illusions is key to understanding politics and business, and Rose's book is one I strongly recommend.

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