Wise or mad crowds? The cognitive mechanisms underlying information cascades
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19142828 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alan Novaes Tump (0000-0001-7725-7929, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, corresponding author), Timothy J Pleskac (0000-0001-5761-1900, University of Kansas), Ralf H J M Kurvers (0000-0002-3460-0392, Max Planck Institute for Human Development) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | PREPRINT |
| Publisher | Center for Open Science (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.31234/osf.io/6vt2p |
| OpenAlex | W4255599095 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Whether getting vaccinated, buying stocks, or crossing streets, people rarely make decisions alone. Rather, multiple people decide sequentially, setting the stage for information cascades whereby early-deciding individuals can influence others' choices. To understand how information cascades through social systems, it is essential to capture the dynamics of the decision-making process. We introduce the social drift-diffusion model to capture these dynamics. We tested our model using a sequential choice task. The model was able to recover the dynamics of the social decision-making process, accurately capturing how individuals integrate personal and social information dynamically over time and when they timed their decisions. Our results show the importance of the interrelationships between accuracy, confidence, and response time in shaping the quality of information cascades. The model reveals the importance of capturing the dynamics of decision processes to understand how information cascades in social systems, paving the way for applications in other social systems
Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Computer security · Crowds · Decision process · Information cascade · Management science · Social dynamics · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Computer Science · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |