Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities. A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change. In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency. Private Truths, Public Lies uses its theoretical argument to illuminate an array of puzzling social phenomena. They include the unexpected fall of communism, the paucity, until recently, of open opposition to affirmative action in the United States, and the durability of the beliefs that have sustained India's caste system.

Honorable Mention for the 2023 Francis Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize 2023 Judy Grahn Award-Publishing Triangle Finalist Restores queer suffragists to their rightful place in the history of the struggle for women’s right to vote The women’s suffrage movement, much like many other civil rights movements, has an important and often unrecognized queer history. In Public Faces, Secret Lives Wendy L. Rouse reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the suffrage movement included a variety of individuals who represented a range of genders and sexualities. However, owing to the constant pressure to present a “respectable” public image, suffrage leaders publicly conformed to gendered views of ideal womanhood in order to make women’s suffrage more palatable to the public. Rouse argues that queer suffragists did take meaningful action to assert their identities and legacies by challenging traditional concepts of domesticity, family, space, and death in both subtly subversive and radically transformative ways. Queer suffragists also built lasting alliances and developed innovative strategies in order to protect their most intimate relationships, ones that were ultimately crucial to the success of the suffrage movement. Public Faces, Secret Lives is the first work to truly recenter queer figures in the women’s suffrage movement, highlighting their immense contributions as well as their numerous sacrifices.

Preface Living a Lie The Significance of Preference Falsification Private and Public Preferences Private Opinion, Public Opinion The Dynamics of Public Opinion Institutional Sources of Preference Falsification Inhibiting Change Collective Conservatism The Obstinacy of Communism The Ominous Perseverance of the Caste System The Unwanted Spread of Affirmative Action Distorting Knowledge Public Discourse and Private Knowledge The Unthinkable and the Unthought The Caste Ethic of Submission The Blind Spots of Communism The Unfading Specter of White Racism Generating Surprise Unforeseen Political Revolutions The Fall of Communism and Other Sudden Overturns The Hidden Complexities of Social Evolution From Slavery to Affirmative Action Preference Falsification and Social Analysis Notes Index.

When her identical twin sister disappears, Justine Durant slips into the sex-fueled, high-stakes life she never knew her sister lived. . . . The text message came at 3:00—“just in time”—the fail-safe code Justine and her twin, Jillian Durant, devised to survive their traumatic childhood. Now Jillian’s missing and Justine immediately leaves her research job, frantic to discover what happened to her globe-trotting model sister. Inside Jillian’s apartment, Justine uncovers a computer file that reveals that her sister is really Jillian Dare, escort to the richest, most powerful, and most insatiable men on the international corporate scene. And it’s clear that Jillian loved—no, lived for—everything about the lifestyle: the fortune she made nightly, the luxurious gifts, the touch of a man anywhere, anytime, with no limits. Searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance, Justine masquerades as Jillian, plunging into a world of paid carnal extravagance and unleashing a side of herself she never knew existed. It’s a thrillingly daring gamble to take, and the stakes are raised when Justine becomes locked in a sexual power struggle with a man who could be her ally or her most ruthless enemy; a man who can bring her to endless ecstasy or drive her to madness. And Justine must play this dangerous game to perfection and win . . . if she and Jillian are to survive.

Is it ever all right to lie? A philosopher looks at lying and deception in public and private life—in government, medicine, law, academia, journalism, in the family and between friends. Lying is a penetrating and thoughtful examination of one of the most pervasive yet little discussed aspects of our public and private lives. Beginning with the moral questions raised about lying since antiquity, Sissela Bok takes up the justifications offered for all kinds of lies—white lies, lies to the sick and dying, lies of parents to children, lies to enemies, lies to protect clients and peers. The consequences of such lies are then explored through a number of concrete situations in which people are involved, either as liars or as the victims of a lie.

We think we know those who are close to us, and we want to believe that what we see is what we get. But we can never know for certain, because what really goes on inside another's head and heart is essentially a secret. How do you know if that secret is something that will hurt you? Your husband turns to face you in bed. Is he thinking about you or your closest friend? Your boss shows up in another new outfit. Did she get a raise or is she a compulsive shopper who is stealing money from the company? Your teenaged daughter is upstairs in her bedroom. Is she doing her homework or chatting online with a man twice her age? Anatomy of A Secret Life will take you inside the minds of secret-keepers and show you how secrets start, how they're kept, and how they exact their devastating emotional and social toll. Using contemporary case studies and historical examples, Dr. Gail Saltz shows you how to spot--through subtle behaviors and clues--and safely stop the potentially dangerous secrets that someone, even you, might be concealing from the world.