Irrational Publics and the Fate of Democracy

Across cultures, democracies struggle with intolerant groups, misinformation, social media conspiracies, and extreme populists. Egalitarian cultures cannot always withstand this swing towards the irrational.

In Irrational Publics and the Fate of Democracy Stephen Ward combines history and evolutionary psychology for a comprehensive view of the problem, arguing that social irrationality is likely to occur when social tensions trigger a person's enemy stance: ancient extreme traits in human nature such as aggressiveness, desire for domination, paranoia of the other, and us-versus-them tribalism. Analyzing eruptions of public irrationality - from apocalyptic medieval crusades and Nazi doctors in extermination camps to suicidal cults - Ward presents his evolutionary theory of public irrationalism, demonstrating that human nature has both extreme Darwinian traits promoting competition and sociable traits of cooperation and empathy.