Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the collective irrationality of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, such as partisanship and ideology, exposure to misinformation and conspiracy theories or the effectiveness of public messaging. This paper presents a complementary explanation to epistemic accounts of collective irrationality, focusing on the moral reasons underlying people’s decisions regarding vaccination. We argue that the moralization of COVID-19 risk mitigation measures contributed to the polarization of groups along moral values, which ultimately led to the (...) emergence of collective irrational behaviors. Collective irrationality arises from groups explicitly or implicitly endorsing values that ultimately harm both themselves and those around. The role of social media platforms in amplifying this polarization and contributing to the emergence of collective irrationality is also examined. Finally, potential strategies for addressing the moral sources of collective irrationality are discussed. (shrink)

To secure cooperative opportunities people align their beliefs with the normative expectations of their social environment. These expectations are continuously managed by interactive reasoning, a process that results in dynamical pools of reasons. When people are more concerned about their social standing and reputation than truth, pools of reasons give rise to collective irrationalities. They determine what people should believe if they want to be known as a reliable group member. This account has implications for our understanding of human (...) irrationality and how to deal with it. (shrink)

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus swept the world in late 2019, it has brought widespread fear, some suspicion, and degrees of stigma. In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemics, a series of collective irrationalities such as panic buying, protest marches against vaccines, and pandemic stigma occurred. This phenomenon is inseparable from the spread of rumors about the epidemic. The advent of social media has radically changed the way we consume information and form opinions and made a flood of digital misinformation (...) becoming ubiquitous. The diffusion of false rumors affects the public’s perception of reality and disrupts the prevention of the epidemic. This paper analyzes the COVID-19 collective irrationalities from epidemic psychology to provide a new reference view for overcoming psychological problems related to COVID-19. (shrink)

In the previous discussions of irrationality in philosophy and psychology, the focus has been on irrationality at the level of individuals, such as irrational reasoning, irrational judgment, irrati...

One of the most persistent legacies of Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians has been the centrality of the concept of “ideology” in contemporary social criticism. The concept was introduced in order to account for a very specific phenomenon, viz. the fact that individuals often participate in maintaining and reproducing institutions under which they are oppressed or exploited. In the extreme, these individuals may even actively resist the efforts of anyone who tries to change these institutions on their behalf. Clearly, (...) some explanation needs to be given of how individuals could systematically fail to see where their interests lie, or how they might fail to pursue these interests once these have been made clear to them. This need is often felt with some urgency, since failure to provide such an explanation usually counts as prima facie evidence against the claim that these individuals are genuinely oppressed or exploited in the first place. (shrink)

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation. I will especially focus on disruptions in emotion regulation by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, (...) with very little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiralling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members' affect control and eventually the group's with whom the members identify. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument against the view that structural (or attitude-based) irrationality consists in failing to respond correctly to normative reasons. According to this view, a pattern of attitudes is structurally irrational if and only if that pattern guarantees that one has at least one attitude one ought not to have. I argue that this ought-violation view comes with three indispensable theoretical commitments. These commitments concern various relationships between normative permissions and oughts that govern beliefs and intentions, (...) and they may appear plausible when viewed in isolation. However, once they are collectively conjoined, they imply oughts that are incompatible with the ought-violation view of structural irrationality. In particular, on the ought-violation view, these oughts entail that you are necessarily structurally irrational whenever [you intend to p] and [you believe that it is not the case that you ought to p]. However, since you can rationally intend things that you believe to be normatively optional (e.g. merely permitted or supererogatory), the ought-violation view faces the following dilemma: it must either deny one of its essential commitments or accept as irrational a set of attitudes that are clearly not. Either way suffices to show that the ought-violation view cannot serve as a correct analysis of structural irrationality. (shrink)

Despite immediate appearances, this book is not primarily a hermeneutical exercise in which the superiority of one interpretation of canonical texts is championed against others. Its origin lies elsewhere, near the overlap of history, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and social theory of the usual kind. Weber, Pareto, Freud, W. I. Thomas, Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, and many others of similar stature long ago wondered and wrote much about the interplay between societal rationalization and individual rationality, between collective furor and private psychopathology—in (...) short, about the strange and worrisome union of “character and social structure” (to recall Gerth and Mills). Pondering the history of social thought in this century can lead to the unpleasant realization that such large-scale questions slipped away, especially from sociologists, sometime before World War II. Or, if not entirely lost, they were so transformed in range and rhetoric that a gap opened between contemporary theorizing and its European background. Perhaps this partly explains Weber’s continuing appeal. By dealing with him, one might again broach topics long at odds with “social science” of the last forty years.—From the Preface. (shrink)

This thesis argues for the fundamental importance of the opposition between holistic and reductionistic world-views in economics. Both reductionism and holism may nevertheless underpin laissez-faire policy prescriptions. Scrutiny of the nature of the articulation between micro and macro levels in the writings of economists suggests that invisible hand theories play a key role in reconciling reductionist policy prescriptions with a holistic world. An examination of the prisoners' dilemma in game theory and Arrow's impossibility theorem in social choice theory sets the (...) scene. The prisoners' dilemma epitomises the collective irrationality coordination problems lead to. The source of the dilemma is identified as the combination of interdependence in content and independence in form of the decision making process. Arrovian impossibility has been perceived as challenging traditional views of the relationship between micro and macro levels in economics. Conservative arguments against the possibility in principle of a social welfare function are criticised here as depending on an illicit dualism. The thesis then reviews the standpoints of Smith, Hayek and Keynes. For Smith, the social desirability of individual self-seeking activity is ensured by the 'invisible hand' of a god who has moulded us so to behave, that the quantity of happiness in the world is always maximised. Hayek seeks to re-establish the invisible hand in a secular age, replacing the agency of a deity with an evolutionary mechanism. Hayek's evolutionary theory, criticised here as being based on the exploded notion of group selection, cannot underpin the desirability of spontaneous outcomes. I conclude by arguing that Keynes shares the holistic approach of Smith and Hayek, but without their reliance on invisible hand mechanisms. If spontaneous processes cannot be relied upon to generate desirable social outcomes then we have to take responsibility for achieving this ourselves by establishing the appropriate institutional framework to eliminate macroeconomic prisoners' dilemmas. (shrink)

James Madison wrote, 'Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob'. The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge this claim by considering conditions under which many minds can be wiser than one. With backgrounds in economics, cognitive science, political science, law and history, the authors consider information markets, the internet, jury debates, democratic deliberation and the use of diversity as mechanisms for improving collective decisions. At the (...) same time, they consider voter irrationality and paradoxes of aggregation as possibly undermining the wisdom of groups. Implicitly or explicitly, the volume also offers guidance and warnings to institutional designers. (shrink)

John Lewis and Thomas Aquinas may seem like an unusual pairing for an essay. The first was a modern American congressman and civil rights activist, and the second was a priest, philosopher, and theologian from medieval Italy. Differences notwithstanding, their worldviews share a remarkable degree of overlap. This paper explores how each of these figures describes the development of right judgment and thus serves modern audiences seeking to understand how reason, emotion, and virtue operate in moral decision-making. Bringing them together, (...) the author examines methods for rightly developing practical moral knowledge. Lewis’s political influence is studied theologically for how social formation, individual agency, and collective action function in perceiving and implementing natural law. Aquinas provides a theoretical framework for comprehending these concepts, by first defining synderesis and conscience, then discussing ways of knowing natural law, and, finally, explaining the virtue of prudence. (shrink)

Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, (...) the role of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. The also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields. (shrink)

This paper argues that group attitudes can be assessed in terms of standards of rationality and that group-level rationality need not be due to individual-level rationality. But it also argues that groups cannot be collective epistemic agents and are not collectively responsible for collective irrationality. I show that we do not need the concept of collective epistemic agency to explain how group-level irrationality can arise. Group-level irrationality arises because even rational individuals can fail to (...) reason about how their attitudes will combine with those of others. In some cases they are morally responsible for this failure, in others they are not. Moreover, the argument for collective epistemic agency is incoherent because reasons-for-groups are ipso facto reasons-for-individual. Instead of talking about reasons-for-groups, we should therefore distinguish between self-regarding reasons and group-regarding reasons. Both kinds of reasons are reasons-for-individuals. These conceptual considerations in favour of moderate individualism are strengthened by an analysis of our moral practice of responding to collective shortfalls of rationality and by the unpalatable moral implications of collectivism about epistemic agency. There is no need to change the subject. Groups can be rational or irrational, but they do not reason. (shrink)

We introduce a number of logics to reason about collective propositional attitudes that are defined by means of the majority rule. It is well known that majoritarian aggregation is subject to irrationality, as the results in social choice theory and judgment aggregation show. The proposed logics for modelling collective attitudes are based on a substructural propositional logic that allows for circumventing inconsistent outcomes. Individual and collective propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, desires, obligations, are then modelled by (...) means of minimal modalities to ensure a number of basic principles. In this way, a viable consistent modelling of collective attitudes is obtained. (shrink)

Examines what is necessary for a group to constitute an agent that can display akrasia, and what steps such a group might take to establish self‐control. The topic has some interest in itself, and the discussion suggests some lessons about how we should think of akrasia in the individual as well as in the collective case. Under the image that the lessons support, akrasia is a sort of constitutional disorder: a failure to achieve a unity projected in the avowal (...) of agency. This image fits well with the constitutional model of the soul in Plato's Republic. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of papers, all but one of which were presented at a conference on the same topic at the University of Montreal in 2001. The editors have also added a brief introduction, half of which is devoted to a very quick overview of some of the relevant background literature on weakness of will and practical irrationality, while the other half summarizes the main claims of each of the papers in the volume.

There is not as much resistance to COVID-19 mitigation as there seems, but there are structural features that make resistance seem worse than it is. Here we describe two ways that the problem seeming to be worse than it is can make it worse. First, visible hesitation to implement COVID-19 responses signals to the wider society that mitigation measures may not succeed, which undermines people’s conditional willingness to join in on those efforts. Second, our evaluations of others’ willingness to implement (...) these measures are informed by our attempts to mind-read them. Yet attempts to mind-read groups often mislead us, because groups invariably act from diverse motives whereas mind-reading works best when identifying relatively stable and consistent motivations. This means that a small minority of people refusing to implement measures can have an outsized prominence that prompts mind-reading to diagnose widespread hesitation. These two factors form a feedback loop with each other: we see some people’s hesitation, which prompts us to mind-read other people as being more uncertain about the responses than they actually are, which undermines our confidence in the responses, which in turn encourages others to mind-read this hesitation, which further undermines confidence. (shrink)

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with professional boundary (...) issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change. (shrink)

Some collective irrationalities, like epistemically and pragmatically reckless Covid skepticism, are especially dangerous. While we normally have incentives to avoid dangerous beliefs, there are cases in which the danger of a belief is valuable. This is not captured by most accounts of motivated reasoning. I argue that Covid skepticism can function as a costly signal (handicap) so as to more effectively communicate social identity and commitment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an “infodemic” of misinformation and conspiracy theory. This article points to three explanatory factors: the challenge of forming accurate beliefs when overwhelmed with information, an implausibly individualistic conception of epistemic virtue, and an adversarial information environment that suborns epistemic dependence. Normally we cope with the problems of informational excess by relying on other people, including sociotechnical systems that mediate testimony and evidence. But when we attempt to engage in epistemic “superheroics” - withholding trust (...) from others and trying to figure it all out for ourselves – these can malfunction in ways that make us vulnerable to forming irrational beliefs. Some epistemic systems are prone to coalescing audiences around false conspiracy theories. This analysis affords a new perspective on philosophical efforts to understand conspiracy theories and other epistemic projects prone to collective irrationality. (shrink)

In two recent papers, Christian List and Philip Pettit have argued that there is a problem in the aggregation of reasoned judgements that is akin to the aggregation of the preference problem in social choice theory. 1 Indeed, List and Pettit prove a new general impossibility theorem for the aggregation of judgements, and provide a propositional interpretation of the social choice problem that suggests it is a special case of their impossibility result. 2 Specifically, they show that no judgement aggregation (...) function for a group is possible if the group seeks to satisfy certain `minimal conditions' designed to ensure that the function is both responsive to the individually rational views of its members and collectively rational in the set of judgements it holds. In this article, I resist the List and Pettit claim that there is the same propensity for collective irrationality or incoherence in the aggregation of reasoned judgements as there is in the aggregation of preference. I argue that reason, because it has a logical structure that is lacking in mere preference, has the effect of giving priority to some aggregations over others, a priority that is not permitted by one of the conditions imposed by List and Pettit. This avoids the incoherence that would otherwise exist if these different aggregations, not consistent with one another, were to compete at the same level of priority. The priority of some aggregations is particularly apparent, I shall argue, if one views the aggregation of judgements through the lens of common law decision-making. Key Words: social choice • judgement • Condorcet jury theorem • collective rationality • public reason • doctrinal paradox • discursive dilemma. (shrink)

Introduction -- Function and destiny -- What's the good of thinking? -- Rationality, individual and collective -- Irrationality.

Debates about political correctness often proceed as if proponents see nothing to fear in erecting norms that inhibit expression on the one side, and opponents see nothing but misguided efforts to silence political enemies on the other.1 Both views are mistaken. Political correctness, as I argue, is an important attempt to advance the legitimate interests of certain groups in the public sphere. However, this type of norm comes with costs that mustn’t be neglected–sometimes in the form of conflict with other (...) values we hold dear, but often by creating an internal schism that threatens us with collective irrationality. Political correctness thus sets up dilemmas I wish to set out (but not, alas, resolve). The cliché is that political correctness tramples on rights to free-speech, as if the potential loss were merely expressive; the real issue is that in filtering public discourse, political correctness may defeat our own substantive aims. (shrink)

This article examines the historically contentious relationship between the financial market and the public as discussed in academic literature, financial journalism and prescriptive how-to invest handbooks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although financial markets thrive off active public participation, speculating at stock and commodity exchanges has been a sanctioned ritual reserved for a privileged minority. We argue that the financial establishment’s intent to control market access through financial entry-barriers (such as exchange membership fees and margin requirements) has (...) been part of a bigger story we need to understand: a history of delegitimating uninitiated ‘lay speculators’ through the construction of exclusionary narratives about unfit amateur investors and morally corrupt publics. We conceptualize this process as an ongoing and delicate boundary-making exercise contributing to a market participation discourse that has been characterized by a set of reductive binaries, such as those of insider–outsider, professional–amateur and speculator–gambler. We show, however, that attempts to delineate popular participation in financial markets through these binaries have been complicated by the idea that besides being a force of market instability and collective irrationality, the public was a largely untapped source of liquidity. We argue that today’s discourse on public participation in financial markets resuscitates these simplified narratives and propose a more nuanced view of non-professional market participants being both destabilizers and liquidity-providers. (shrink)

Humans may be the only creatures conscious of having a future, but all too often we would rather not think about it. Likewise, our societies, unable to deal with radical uncertainty, do not make policies with a view to the long term. Instead, we suffer from a sense of powerlessness, collective irrationality, and perennial political discontent. In _The Future and Its Enemies_, Spanish philosopher Daniel Innerarity makes a plea for a new social contract that would commit us to (...) moral and political responsibility with respect to future generations. He urges us to become advocates for the future in the face of enemies who, oblivious to the costs of modernization, press for endless and unproductive acceleration. His accessible book proposes a new way of confronting the unknown—one grounded in the calculation of risk. Declaring the classical right-left divide to be redundant, Innerarity presents his hopes for a renewed democracy and a politics that would find convincing ways to mediate between the priorities of the present, the heritage of the past, and the challenges that lie ahead. (shrink)

How can one freely act contrary to one’s better judgement about what is right? Since antiquity, this question has attracted attention of many ethicists and theorists of action as the “problem of akrasia”. On a traditional and still influential view akrasia happens when some irrational tendencies, emotions and desires override the rational part of one’s soul and cause them to act in a way which contradicts their rational beliefs about what is good and desirable. In this paper, we aim to (...) show that the view of akrasia as a matter of practical irrationality doesn’t provide an adequate tool for understanding the complex nature of akrasia, since it obstructs an insight into the rational and social dimension of akrasia. We will argue that akrasia, far from being only an individual phenomenon, concerns also the action of broader social and political entities. We will introduce the notion of socio-political akrasia and demonstrate the seriousness of this phenomenon by analysing the case of (in)action of contemporary governments in the context of the climate crisis. Finally, we will conclude by offering a perspective on how to prevent socio-political akrasia. (shrink)

Democracy in its currently dominant liberal form has proven supportive of unprecedented human flourishing. However, it also appears increasingly plagued by political polarization, strained to cope with the digitalization of the political discourse, and threatened by authoritarian backlash. A growing sense of the anthropic risks—with runaway climate change as the leading example—thus often elicits concern regarding democracy’s capability of mitigating them. Apparently, lacking a sufficient degree of the citizens’ consensus on the priority issues of the day, it can find itself (...) unable to muster the resolve and resources necessary to alter its “business as usual” path even where disasters loom ever larger in its track. Against these concerns, I argue that democracy’s potential remains far from depleted. While political irrationality needs to be considered a major obstacle to successfully managing the anthropic risks, many existing reform proposals appear capable of reining it in. My main suggestion is to seek ways to facilitate a speedier and more effective exploration of the landscape of the possible democratic mechanisms of collective choice. A virtual platform to support such an exploration—which I call ‘democracy’s digital playground’—may allow us to find innovative ways of managing anthropic risks without compromising our commitment to democratic values. (shrink)

Steven Pinker argues that rationality represents both a “patrimony,” a human endowment exhibited even in the behaviors of “primitive” societies, and a powerful force for good. At the same time, Pinker describes rationality as a “scarce” resource in the contemporary world, one that must be defined, defended, and deployed against the many destructive forms of irrationality to which we are prone. In order to avert a looming “Tragedy of the Commons,” Pinker proposes that rationality should be considered not just (...) a cognitive benefit but a moral imperative. In doing so, however, he argues against the Enlightenment tradition in which the individual, rather than the “Commons,” is the final arbiter. The fundamental tension in Pinker’s argument is between a “primitive” process of collective reasoning that produces a stable but nonprogressive society and a “modern” orientation toward the individual that has brought us to the brink of political chaos and ecological disaster. (shrink)

Society's understanding of “suffering” and disaster determines how it will be encountered. In the present study, we apply a constructivist approach and study the understanding of November 12, 2017 earthquake in Zahab at the context of the traumatic history of the region. Applying critical ethnography, oral history, field research and in-depth interviews, we found out that the event is understood in the continuation of a history of irrationality and injustice. Narrators share a common fear among marginalized groups: fear of (...) betrayal, to be forgotten and to be ignored. There exists a vital need for creating collective narratives and identities, hearing them, recognizing them and establishing a meaningful relationship between them. (shrink)

Jon Elster denies that collectives can behave rationally. Rational behavior requires action in conformity with preferences and beliefs. According to Elster, however, social choice theory demonstrates that collectives cannot have preferences, even in principle, and this precludes them from behaving either rationally or irrationally. (Irrationality, after all, is a property that can only be possessed by something that could in theory be rational.) Elster, however, does not fully accept this refutation of the possibility of collective rationality. For in (...) exploring the question of random selection, he argues that collectives, as well as individuals, can employ random selection as a tool to facilitate more rational behavior. This contradiction can be resolved if collective preferences are not as inconceivable as Elster suggests, and Elster himself gives reason for believing they may not be. He does this by distinguishing between a thin and a broad theory of rationality. His refutation of the possibility of collective preferences depends on a thin theory of preferences (and beliefs), a theory that he admits is inadequate for purposes of normative assessment. A broad theory of preferences and beliefs, when properly developed, could well accommodate the notion of collective preferences and beliefs, and thus of collective rationality. Key Words: Elster • rationality • social choice theory. (shrink)

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary The New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated collection of his immensely popularWall Street Journal advice column, “Ask Ariely”. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & (...) A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market? What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking? How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is it possible to put a price on the human soul? Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex? In Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life. (shrink)

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense are they defective? Many will be false and harmful, but philosophers have further argued that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by violating our epistemic responsibilities. It is also assumed that we are only morally responsible for the harms that prejudiced beliefs cause because, in forming (...) these beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. In Prejudice, Endre Begby argues that these common convictions are misguided. His discussion shows in detail that there are many epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief, and that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to articulate our ethical responsibilities. Doing so unreasonably burdens victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, Begby provides an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. This view is supported by a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, Begby develops a systematic platform for non-ideal epistemology which would apply to a wide range of other social and epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more. (shrink)