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NOTES
PREFACE: A SOCIOLOGIST’S APOLOGY
1. For John Gribbin’s review of Becker (1998), see Gribbin (1998).
2. See Watts (1999) for a description of small-world networks.
3. See, for example, a recent story on the complexity of modern finance, war, and policy (Segal 2010).
4. For a report on Bailey-Hutchinson’s proposal, see Mervis (2006). For a report on Senator Coburn’s remarks, see Glenn (2009).
5. See Lazarsfeld (1949).
6. For an example of the “it’s not rocket science” mentality, see Frist et al. (2010).
7. See Svenson (1981) for the result about drivers. See Hoorens (1993), Klar and Giladi (1999), Dunning et al (1989), and Zuckerman and Jost (2001) for other examples of illusory superiority bias. See Alicke and Govorun (2005) for the leadership result.
CHAPTER 1: THE MYTH OF COMMON SENSE
1. See Milgram’s Obedience to Authority for details (Milgram, 1969). An engaging account of Milgram’s life and research is given in Blass (2009).
2. Milgram’s reaction was described in a 1974 interview in Psychology Today, and is reprinted in Blass (2009). The original report on the subway experiment is Milgram and Sabini (1983) and has been reprinted in Milgram (1992). Three decades later, two New York Times reporters set out to repeat Milgram’s experiment. They reported almost exactly the same experience: bafflement, even anger, from riders; and extreme discomfort themselves (Luo 2004, Ramirez and Medina 2004).
3. Although the nature and limitations of common sense are discussed in introductory sociology textbooks (according to Mathisen [1989], roughly half of the sociology texts he surveyed contained references to common sense), the topic is rarely discussed in sociology journals. See, however, Taylor (1947), Stouffer (1947), Lazarsfeld (1949), Black (1979), Boudon (1988a), Mathisen (1989), Bengston and Hazzard (1990), Dobbin (1994), and Klein (2006) for a variety of perspectives by sociologists. Economists have been even less concerned with common sense than sociologists, but see Andreozzi (2004) for some interesting remarks on social versus physical intuition.
4. See Geertz (1975, p.6).
5. Taylor (1947, p. 1).
6. Philosophers in