Reflections on Cass Sunstein’s Beatlemania Article: Romantic Behaviouralism?

Abstract

In the first edition of this journal, Cass Sunstein offered a behaviouralist reading of the Beatles audience. He suggested the band became a worldwide sensation based on the spread of endorsements by Beatles people acting in line with behavioural norms, such as trust in others’ aesthetic judgements and a need to be liked. This article aims to critically analyse Sunstein’s work by looking at the data sources he used, assessing the applicability of his claims, and considering the ideological effects of what I call a romantic behaviouralist approach. Alongside Sunstein’s ideas, a neo-Durkheimian reading is suggested to account for interesting regularities of fan behaviour. My aim is not to discredit mechanisms of human behaviour discussed by Professor Sunstein, but to question the grounding assumptions behind a behavioural approach to popular culture history, and suggest that the application of some proposed behavioural mechanisms may be limited by other elements at play.