The measure of collective conservatism that I have just presented runs from 0 to 100 percent. For any established public opinion, the higher the degree of collective conservatism, the more it owes its persistence to history.

The conformism of man manifests itself in preference falsification; that of reason, in a pervasive reliance on social proof.

One consequence of postrevolutionary preference falsification is thus to make it even less comprehensible why the revolution was unforeseen.

A phrase that captures the meaning of preference falsification exactly is “living a lie.”

The more complex the environment, the less adequate is the individual’s relevant knowledge and, hence, the less he can trust signs that his routine is obsolete. This argument has a far-reaching implication: the more complex the environment, the less sensitive individual behavior is to actual environmental shocks.

Fear-induced preference falsification explains the paucity of public black opposition.

The reason so few politicians have opposed affirmative action openly and unequivocally is that they have been afraid of opening themselves to the charge of racism.

If one distinguishing characteristic of preference falsification is that it brings discomfort to the falsifier, another is that it is a response to real or imagined social pressures to convey a particular preference.

The informational value of repetition is rooted in one of the heuristics we use to overcome our cognitive limitations: the availability heuristic. A person employs this heuristic “whenever he estimates frequency or probability by the ease with which instances or associations come to mind.”