Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide

  • Cass R. Sunstein
Oxford University Press: 2009. 208 pp. $21.95, £12.99 9780195378016 | ISBN: 978-0-1953-7801-6

Law professor Cass Sunstein creatively combines academic scholarship, popular writing and public service. As an adviser to US President Barack Obama, he has recently moved from his position at Harvard Law School to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. His latest book, Going to Extremes, examines how social segregation causes people's views to become more exaggerated.

A member of a Sunni extremist group during a protest in Lahore, Pakistan, last month. Credit: A. ALI/AFP/GETTY

Sunstein's specialism is behavioural decision theory, a field that has demonstrated that beliefs are not formed using rational deliberation alone. In this book, he gathers evidence to show that when like-minded people interact, their views are reinforced and become more extreme. For instance, in one experiment, subjects who identified themselves as 'liberal' or 'conservative' became even more so after being separated into two groups of like-minded individuals to discuss controversial issues such as global warming, abortion and gay marriage.

Sunstein concludes that people tend to seek others with similar ideas, and their interactions give rise to 'group polarization'. His key example is religious terrorism, as perpetrated by young men who spend time together, pray together and read the same materials. In reinforcing the legitimacy of one another's complaints, they generate an unwarranted justification for their violent intentions and a groundless optimism in their ability to succeed.

Going to Extremes is also a cautionary tale for Obama. His predecessor, George W. Bush, has been widely criticized for failing to supply sufficient troops and equipment to the rebuilding initiative in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Bush's failure to act has often been attributed by the Democratic opposition to the similar mindset of his team of advisers, who were hand-picked to work beside defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Very soon after Rumsfeld was replaced by Robert Gates in December 2006, Bush's strategy changed. After much consultation, in January 2007 Bush authorized a dramatic increase in troop levels in Iraq.

Sunstein argues that a diversity of advisory opinion is essential to good leadership, to avoid executive policy becoming entrenched irrespective of unfolding events. As a small group of people all committed to one viewpoint, Bush's advisers moved to a position that was more extreme, and less tenable, than any single adviser would have held in isolation.

However, not all collective false beliefs are the product of self-segregation. 'Belief contagion' can lead large numbers of people to accept outlandish notions for which there are no credible evidence. For example, in the mid-twentieth century, psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim asserted, on the basis of anecdotal evidence, that autism was caused by “refrigerator mothers” — women who treated their children coldly. Widely endorsed at the time but now regarded as erroneous, this runaway belief heralded years of victimization of the mothers of children with autism and misdirected therapeutic efforts.

A more recent example of belief contagion from the late-twentieth century is the preoccupation with 'recovered memories', which are susceptible to suggestion and hence can be easily spread. There have been many cases of teachers, for example, being prosecuted for alleged sexual abuse on the basis of community accusations, backed up with rehearsed child testimony and irregular court proceedings that were shaped by false collective beliefs.

Prejudice is another potent generator of false beliefs. Anti-black sentiments were fuelled in the southern United States after the civil war by self-serving politicians and tabloid newspapers. Under Adolf Hitler, Nazi politicians spread anti-Semitic stories for political reasons, but prejudice rendered these stories plausible.

On reading Going to Extremes, one might expect that people are becoming more polarized. But that is not the case. American voters are now more likely to declare themselves Independents, rather than either Democrats or Republicans, than they were a century ago. And in all but four sessions of the US Congress between 1980 and 2007, the president and the congressional majority have come from different parties.We may feel more polarized today because, especially through the media, we are in daily contact with those with whom we disagree.

Nor should terrorism be thought of as simply the product of group polarization. Terrorism has long been an effective tactic for non-state actors with political goals, and is supported and funded by large sections of the societies in which they live.

Going to Extremes is a fine book full of insightful evidence and intelligent commentary on modern political life. Sunstein's vision of emancipatory political discourse is salutary, and the world would probably be a better place if we followed it. But this is only one aspect of how we form beliefs.