The Social Organization of Secrecy and Deception

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

One would think that secrets are hard to keep, and lies hard to maintain, because it doesn't take much for the truth to escape and once it's out, it can't be put back into the bottle. Yet secrets and lies reside at the heart of much social and political order, sometimes for years and even decades at a time. The objective of this course is to advance our scientific understanding of how this is possible, drawing on sociological, psychological, and historical research on such things as performance, secrecy, lying, forgetting, doubt, denial, and inattention. Case studies will include instances of corporate malfeasance (such as Ponzi schemes and insider trading), Big Tobacco's cover-up of the health consequences of smoking, the lies told by the totalitarian regime of North Korea, the secret British program to break the German cipher during WWII, elaborate attempts to cover up government atrocities, and the cat-and-mouse game between international inspectors and regimes thought to be developing banned weapons. Throughout, we will be concerned with the distinct methodological challenges of studying things many people want to keep secret. Requirements will include midterm and final examinations, reading quizzes/reaction papers, participation, and a final research paper.