A major argument in Not Born Yesterday is that humans are more rational on an individual level than you think. It’s kind of an inversion of books that came out in the late 2000’s, such as Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
The major topic in chapter 7 is “social and emotional contagion.” The examples to illustrate this phenomenon are often silly, like outbreaks of laughing at high schools, or less silly, such as suicide. Oftentimes something like yawning is given as evidence of social contagion. The major point that Hugo Mercier makes is that
- The evidence is not always that compelling in magnitude (e.g., a lot of people don’t yawn, and yawning is often triggered by social distance so that total strangers don’t elicit imitation)
- The contagion is often limited to subcultures
The bigger issue seems to be the utilization of the term “contagion.” As we’re living through COVID-19 we don’t need to be told that the analogy fails when the transmission is low, and highly constrained by social variables of group similarity. For example, if contagion only happens with upper-middle-class teenage girls, it is not trivial, but obviously, there is a limit to the spread and effectiveness of the analogy. Just because a 13-year-old girl does something doesn’t mean that you will take this person as a model of emulation.
You use your brain and roll your eyes.
Not Born Yesterday seems to be an extended argument that specific results do not generalize and hold as strongly as their public presentation. On this ground it’s hard to disagree with, though again, you rely on Mercier’s interpretation of the literature.