"I have argued that every person is born with an instinct to join social groups and cultivate social bonds with other individuals. Such instincts and social skills endow individuals with an evolutionary advantage. For this reason one expects and observes that people are far more comfortable accepting the conventional wisdom of their social groups and acting in accord with such conventions. This is true of investment crowds no less than of groups that form the larger society in which we all live. Yet a contrarian trader must place himself apart from investment crowds. By choice he becomes a kind of social outcast in the world of investments, the very world to which he has chosen to devote so much time, energy, and money. Few people can comfortably live with this sort of emotional dissonance. And this internal conflict is always felt most acutely when the financial stakes are highest, when the groupthink phenomenon associated with investment crowds is most intense."
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