We're all lemmings

It's not a new idea and I'm fairly certain I won't read the book, but I liked this example of how people crave fame and connections to celebrities:

Cialdini asked his subjects to read a short biography of Grigori Rasputin, the notorious monk who served as an adviser in the court of Czar Nicolas II, and to give their opinion of him. The biography depicted Rasputin as a mendacioius and manipulative villain. In half the cases Cialdini had adjusted Rasputin's birthday so that it matched that of the reader. Those subjects who shared a birthday with Rasputin were ovrewhelmingly more likely to rate him positively -- as a strong and effective leader with many redeeming qualities.

As a "rational" economist, I initially scoffed when I read of the silly people who improved Rasputin's rep based solely on a shared birthday. Then I began to wonder about how I'd have done in the experiment. I can't say this for sure, but I might have fallen for it too. No, not with Rasputin (I went through a serious period of studying Nicolas' reign so I could never attribute "many redeeming qualities" to Rasputin), but I fear that I could be fall for the same "gotcha" trap in general. I'm not sure this says anything about an inherent craving for fame, but I thought it was a cool experiment.

Very busy right now, but I'll try to come up with a good post in a couple of days. Oh, if my beer bottles start exploding then I can guarantee a good rant. So I guess y'all might want to wish for an unusually high level of fermentation activity over the next few days, though I'd appreciate it if you didn't.