Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.[1]
Focusing on the similarities of individual behaviours in a population reveals the general patterns of human behaviour that are typical of the species, and encourages deterministic interpretations of them. For example, if millions of people make the same choice in the same situation, the individuality of each is backgrounded and the behaviour looks as robotic as the behaviours of other species are often erroneously judged to be.[2]
Focusing on the differences of individual behaviours in a population, on the other hand, reveals the rich diversity that comes about through differences in the biological development and semiotic evolution (ontogenesis) of each individual. The more examined an individual life is, the less robotic it appears. Individuality is in the detail — whatever the species.
Footnotes:
[1] Wilde De Profundis (1905).
[2] From the perspective of the population level, susceptibility to economic and political manipulation would suggest that humans are robots in desperate denial of the fact.