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The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You

The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You
By Mark Buchanan

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The idiosyncrasies of human decision-making have confounded economists and social theorists for years. If each person makes choices for personal (and often irrational) reasons, how can people’s choices be predicted by a single theory? How can any economic, social, or political theory be valid? The truth is, none of them really are.
 
Mark Buchanan makes the fascinating argument that the science of physics is beginning to provide a new picture of the human or “social atom,” and help us understand the surprising, and often predictable, patterns that emerge when they get together. Look at patterns, not people, Buchanan argues, and rules emerge that can explain how movements form, how interest groups operate, and even why ethnic hatred persists. Using similar observations, social physicists can predict whether neighborhoods will integrate, whether stock markets will crash, and whether crime waves will continue or abate.
 
Brimming with mind games and provocative experiments, The Social Atom is an incisive, accessible, and comprehensive argument for a whole new way to look at human social behavior.
Mark Buchanan is a theoretical physicist and an associate editor at Complexus, a journal on biocomplexity. He has been an editor at Nature and New Scientist, and is the author of two prize-nominated books, Ubiquity: The Science of History and Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks. He lives in Cambridgeshire, England.
The idiosyncrasies of human decision-making have confounded economists and social theorists for years. If each person makes choices for personal (and often irrational) reasons, how can people's choices be predicted by a single theory?  The validity of any economic, social, or political theory comes into question.
 
Mark Buchanan argues that the science of physics is beginning to provide a new picture of the human or “social atom,” and help us understand the surprising, and often predictable, patterns that emerge when they get together. Look at patterns, not people, Buchanan argues, and rules emerge that can explain how movements form, how interest groups operate, and even why ethnic hatred persists. Using similar observations, social physicists can predict whether neighborhoods will integrate, whether stock markets will crash, and whether crime waves will continue or abate.
 
The Social Atom is an incisive, accessible, and comprehensive argument for a new way to look at human social behavior.
"Mark Buchanan [is] a theoretical physicist . . . Buchanan argues that one of the basic assumptions of economics—namely, that humans make only reasoned, greedy, self-promoting decisions—is a simplification that calls the whole field into question . . . A former editor of the prestigious science journal Nature, Buchanan witnessed a growing number of physicists write papers about familiar mathematical patterns cropping up in human behavior.  This inspired him to write The Social Atom. His goal is to consider people 'as if they were atoms or molecules following fairly simple rules' and investigate the idea that 'seemingly complicated social happenings may often have quite simple origins, and that we can discover such simplicity by examining how we too may be subject to laws not unlike those of physics' . . . [The book asks] readers to move away from thinking of humans as individuals when it comes to social behavior in a group.  We are . . . simple atoms that think alike, copy one another and self-organize according to common mathematical patterns."—Russ Juskalian, USA Today
 
"Humans mimic other humans, whether they're clapping or buying mobile phones, writes Mark Buchanan in his beguiling behavioral study . . . Yet the same force may influence bigger decisions in life, like whether to have kids, he says. European birthrates slowed so dramatically between 1950 and 2000 that researchers concluded the trend was 'amplified and exaggerated by peer pressure' . . . A theoretical physicist, Buchanan suggests that sociologists should spend less time scrutinizing individual behavior and more time studying the group. 'Think of patterns, not people,' he urges, arguing that people are the atoms, or building blocks, of the social world. We imitate each other, cooperate, learn and adapt in a giant feedback system. Writing in lean, fluid sentences, Buchanan clicks through examples ranging from the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management to the slaughter at Srebrenica. He shows patterns at work in phantom traffic jams, stock sell-offs and the trails human feet carve through public parks . . . As promised in the book's subtitle, Buchanan explains 'Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You' . . . [Buchanan is] on to something big."—James Pressley, Bloomberg News
 
“Likely the Blink or Freakonomics of 2007, theoretical physicist Buchanan’s new book explains how we replicate the behavior of people we admire, and stick close to people with shared fundamental bonds such as ethnic heritage.”—Time Out Chicago
 
“Everything we think about why we do what we do is wrong because we can't help but think and act like individuals, understanding the world around us with anecdote and simple stories. But as Mark Buchanan brilliantly demonstrates with examples from the world all around us, there's a bigger force at work that explains the world far better. Surprisingly, that force looks a lot like the semi-random statistical model that explained the mysteries of quantum physics a century ago. This is a fascinating glimpse into a new way of understanding human behavior.”—Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine, and author of The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
 
"Seldom has a book so infuriated me yet kept me tightly gripped to each page. This is a first-class attack on the smugness of the Humanities by a brilliant provocateur: a disturbing challenge to all of us who think we understand something about the logic of social action and the patterns of history."—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and Buda's Wagon
 
"This lucid and friendly introduction to social theory requires no mathematical or other prerequisites, is full of surprises, and introduces some new ways of thinking about the way human beings interact with each other."—Thomas C. Schelling, Professor emeritus, Harvard University and University of Maryland, and co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics
 
“To those who have watched the social world unravel in recent decades and wondered why we couldn’t do better, Mark Buchanan offers a disarmingly simple solution: emulate the methods of explanation that have already proven themselves effective in the study of nature. The Social Atom is briskly written, informative, and deals with problems of the highest order. Read it and get a glimpse of the coming revolution in the social sciences.”—Lee McIntyre, author of Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior
 
"Buchanan, a theoretical physicist, applies the principles of physics to the study of human behavior. Think of human beings, he says, as 'social atoms,' interactin

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #529254 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-05-29
  • Released on: 2007-05-29
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 256 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Buchanan (Ubiquity: The Science of History) reaches out to the audience for pop social science like The Tipping Point and Freakonomics with the concept of "social physics," a scientific model for the patterns that emerge from the interactions among large groups of people. Though his observations that people excel at imitating the successful behavior of others and will often form collective bonds over such fundamental pretenses as shared ethnic heritage aren't startling, Buchanan leans on his background in theoretical physics and treats these ideas as "a quantum revolution in the social sciences." His presentation is muted by a tendency to talk around the subject, recapping prior discussions and promising future developments instead of establishing a clear, compelling thread. Though the real-life scenarios he uses to illustrate his theories—such as the unexpected revival of Times Square or the outbreak of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia—are engaging, some sections draw upon computer simulations of arbitrary behavior that illustrate his thesis but don't command equal interest. This is a great idea for a magazine article, but awkward at book length. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Buchanan, a theoretical physicist, applies the principles of physics to the study of human behavior. Think of human beings, he says, as "social atoms," interacting with other human beings according to fairly simple rules. It all comes down to patterns of behavior and to viewing human interaction from new (if sometimes slightly counterintuitive) angles. Buchanan tackles a wide variety of subjects, from genocide to fashion trends to class structure to pop culture, showing how they all can be seen as variations of the same theme: all human behavior is fundamentally the same, based on the same basic rules and, thus, often predictable. Packed with intriguing examples--such as the groundbreaking study, conducted more than 30 years ago, in which a researcher showed that racial segregation may have very little to do with actual racism--the book challenges us to reappraise everything we think we know about why we do the things we do. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"...offer fascinating ways to approach worldly problems." — USA Today
 
"beguiling behavorial study...he's on to something big."-Bloomberg News
 
“Likely the Blink or Freakonomics of 2007, theoretical physicist Buchanan’s new book explains how we replicate the behavior of people we admire, and stick close to people with shared fundamental bonds such as ethnic heritage.”—Time Out Chicago
 
“Everything we think about why we do what we do is wrong because we can't help but think and act like individuals, understanding the world around us with anecdote and simple stories. But as Mark Buchanan brilliantly demonstrates with examples from the world all around us, there's a bigger force at work that explains the world far better. Surprisingly, that force looks a lot like the semi-random statistical model that explained the mysteries of quantum physics a century ago. This is a fascinating glimpse into a new way of understanding human behavior.”—Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine, and author of The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
 
"Seldom has a book so infuriated me yet kept me tightly gripped to each page. This is a first-class attack on the smugness of the Humanities by a brilliant provocateur: a disturbing challenge to all of us who think we understand something about the logic of social action and the patterns of history." - Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and Buda's Wagon
 
"This lucid and friendly introduction to social theory requires no mathematical or other prerequisites, is full of surprises, and introduces some new ways of thinking about the way human beings interact with each other." - Thomas C. Schelling, Professor emeritus, Harvard University and University of Maryland, and co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics
 
“I devoured this book as if it contained the secret answer to the human condition–as indeed it might. To those who have watched the social world unravel in recent decades and wondered why we couldn’t do better, Mark Buchanan offers a disarmingly simple solution: emulate the methods of explanation that have already proven themselves effective in the study of nature. The Social Atom is briskly written, informative, and deals with problems of the highest order. Read it and get a glimpse of the coming revolution in the social sciences.”—Lee McIntyre, author of Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior

Customer Reviews

Cutting-Edge Social Science from a Physicist5
This book is a wonderfully astute account of recent advances in the social sciences that is beautifully written and accessible to any literate adult. I despair, however, because as a social scientist I have to wonder why it takes a physicist to write such a book. The author might claim that only a physicist could have written this book. After all, the book advances a perspective Buchanan calls "social physics," a perspective that recognizes the free will of individual human atoms but still seeks to explain human social or collective patterns in the manner of physics, "where atomic-level chaos gives way to the clockwork precision of thermodynamics or planetary motion" (xi).

I am exaggerating when I speak of my despair, although I suspect that because many social scientists are needle-nosed specialists, most are incapable of Mr. Buchanan's synoptic vision. I do have a minor quibble with the author though and that is that at several points Mr. Buchanan takes his atomic/collective patterns metaphor a bit too seriously. It is after all just a metaphor. In fact, the brilliance of the book comes through not so much during its description of collective patterns--stock market fluctuations, rumors, neighborhood gentrification, crime waves, ethic violence-- but in the analysis of the features of atoms that make those patterns possible. The analogy with physics is interesting and arresting, but in physics one can literally be indifferent to the properties of individual atoms while explaining collective regularities, but, as Buchanan demonstrates very nicely, human social regularities arise directly from the (universal) properties or propensities of the human atoms. This is a roundabout way of saying that although the book as a whole is brilliant, the most important chapters are chapters 4, 5 and 6--"The Adaptive Atom," "The Imitating Atom," and "The Cooperative Atom." Each of these chapters describes a feature of human nature that is essential to our social lives and helps explain social patterns or regularities.

In the "Adaptive Atom," Buchanan draws mainly from the work of behavioral economists (especially Brian Arthur) that demonstrates the falsity of the "rational choice" model of human beings put forward by neo-classical economists. Rather than the omniscient, logical, calculating automatons neo-classical economists assume we are, the evidence is that we are adaptive agents--we take a step based upon a rule, idea, or belief and then adjust based upon the outcome (63). Our behavior is governed less by deduction than by trial and error. We recognize patterns, make predictions, and then adapt. Our decisions are typically made on the fly.

In the "Imitating Atom" Buchanan draws from a variety of social psychologists, sociologists and neuroscientists, to once again criticize an assumption of neo-classical economists, in this case the assumption that decisions are made by individuals in social vacuums. The evidence is that we are not isolated monads, but, rather, individuals who regularly seek information from others, especially in circumstances of insecurity, ambiguity and danger. Because of this propensity "social cascades" often result: behavior becomes more attractive the more people do it (103).

In the "Cooperative Atom" Buchanan draws chiefly from Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, Joseph Henrich, Ernst Fehr and Herbert Gintis--all evolutionary thinkers with interests in anthropology and behavioral economics--to drive the final nail in the coffin of "rational choice" theory. The basic point of this chapter is that naturally human beings are not purely self-interested but, rather, "strong reciprocators." We are capable of genuine kindness to those beyond family and friends and we also display righteous indignation toward free riders and those who violate the canons of justice. According to Buchanan and the authors from whom he draws, these features of our nature emerged not through individual competition within groups--such competition favors selfish traits--but via competition between different (cultural) groups. Two decades ago this position was considered heretical among evolutionary thinkers but the evidence has made it a perfectly plausible position among evolutionary social scientists in the last few years and I suspect it will be the consensus view within a few more years among those willing to consult the data.

This brief summary makes it sound as though the book is chiefly an argument against "rational choice" theory, which it is not. Given the importance of "rational choice" theory in economics and, to a lesser degree within sociology, demonstrating the profound failings of the theory is important, but Buchanan also gives "postmodernism" attention, dismissing it as silly claptrap. Additionally, he discusses the tiresome efforts of many social scientists "who have raised the flag of permanent defeat and busy themselves with rehashing the works of great thinkers of the past" (18) and yet other social scientists who mistake the identification of "correlations" for genuine explanations. The most important contribution this book makes, however, is not negative but positive. It is the truly fine summaries of the ideas of thinkers such as Richerson, Boyd, Hernrich, Fehr and Gintis who, along with similarly inclined social scientists, are working to advance and unify the social sciences on a sound empirical basis guided by an evolutionary theory of culture. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the most important recent work being done in the social sciences but I would also recommend that after reading the "Social Atom" one move on to the original sources as well. Richerson and Boyd's Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution or Henrich et al's Foundations of Human Sociality would be especially good places to start.

Brad Lowell Stone

Disappointing2
The dust jacket promises that "a groundbreaking social theory reveals the essential - and surprising - simplicity of human behavior" but the book fails to deliver.

What I enjoyed about the book was its ambition to find some underlying concept that would explain much of racial segregation, movements of stock markets, genocide, income inequality and other disparate aspects of society. Buchanan weaves a variety of anecdotes and stories into his presentation that keeps the book from being dry.

My frustration with the book related to both the core theory as well as the format and style. The core theory, as far as I could derive it from his meandering writing style, is that computer programs that model simplified interactions and changes among individuals can be valuable tools to understand how behavior develops. However, most of what he presents is not new or insightful.

Several little things annoyed me:
1) Many of his stories and points have been used more successfully by authors in similar fields. For example, Dawkins has used the tit for tat relationship between the British and German soldiers in WWI's trench warfare in his explanation for the biological basis for cooperation and altruism. Taleb has used the failure of Long Term Capital Management to discuss fat tailed distributions.
2) He creates a number of straw men so that his new theory can knock them down. For example, he repeats several times that until recently economists assumed all individuals were perfectly rational decision makers but I'm hard pressed to recall any economist taking that position in over a decade.
3) An arrogance about physicists pervades the book - there's a clear subtext that people in the financial markets, sociologists and historians aren't as smart as his colleagues. For example, now that a computer model was built in 2007 of how participants in a deregulated Illinois electrical market might work, they now have "real understanding". Now that physicists have looked at US dollar / Japanese Yen exchange rates, their models predict how the rates will move with great accuracy (too many models run by math and physics trained quants have blown up to give this much credence), His attack on the religious on p.200 seemed very out of place in this book.
4) He's sloppy with his facts and conclusions. The Soviet Union did not collapse in 1987 (p.156, try 1991). The collapse of the Russian Ruble did not cause the October 1987 market crash (p.33, blame the Ruble for LTCM's problems a decade later). Although the law of unintended consequences is in full force, his choice of airline deregulation (p.188) and his conclusion that prices are not significantly lower than they would have been and that airplanes are less safe seems plain wrong.

A brilliant book on an important topic5
It was my pleasure to read an advance copy of Mark Buchanan's marvelous new book The Social Atom, for which I wrote the following blurb that appears on the back jacket:

"I devoured this book as if it contained the secret answer to the human condition-as indeed it might. To those who have watched the social world unravel in recent decades and wondered why we couldn't do better, Mark Buchanan offers a disarmingly simple solution: emulate the methods of explanation that have already proven themselves effective in the study of nature. The Social Atom is briskly written, informative, and deals with problems of the highest order. Read it and get a glimpse of the coming revolution in the social sciences." Lee McIntyre, author of Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press, 2006)

Now that the book is actually out I'm happy that I can finally say a bit more. One of the best things about this book is that it not only lays out a general philosophical program (be more scientific about the study of human behavior and you'll have a better chance of understanding and fixing a wide range of social problems), it also draws on many specific examples from a number of disciplines to show how this program is already being put into place. One of the previous posters in this forum lamented that it took a physicist to write this book, but in some ways that isn't surprising. Social scientists have sometimes seemed to barely notice the empirical revolution that is taking place right under their noses! This book isn't so much a manifesto, then, as a guidebook to the brilliant work that is already going on in some corners of the study of human behavior, placed within the context of the philosophical foundations that have always supported a more rigorous social science.

Like The Tipping Point and Freakonomics, Buchanan has written a book that is clear and easy to follow and so it will draw the general reader into debates that have been circulating in the academy for years. But he has done so without compromising the depth and complexity of the subject so that, even those of us who have been working on these issues for years, he has advanced the debate. Philosophers, social scientists, the general public (and maybe even theoretical physicists) will learn much from this book.