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    There Are No True Rebels

    by Joann Greco Oct 20, 2016 5 minutes

    The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions seems so obvious that it is not even worth mentioning,” Jonah Berger writes in the opening of his 2016 book, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. “Except that it’s wrong.”

    Berger, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has made a specialty of researching why we make the decisions we do. In his first book, the best-selling Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Berger, 36, explored the hows and whys of ideas and products that go viral. This time around, he looks more deeply at the ways our choices are impacted by the messenger.

    In Berger’s view, we are not as smart as we might think.

    Clockwise from top left: Wikipedia, Scott Olson/Getty Images, SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images, Gene Duncan/Disney

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