Public actions can snowball beliefs, overriding stronger private information
Evidence
But trusting the judgments of others does not always work so neatly when these judgments are not actually independent of each other. UCLA economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch, for instance, have described a phenomenon known as an “information cascade,” by which a belief can spread through a group despite the presence of strong evidence to the contrary. In these cases, incorrect statements of belief can snowball as people’s judgments are influenced by others in their social environment. — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 282
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Individually rational agents can form collectively irrational groups — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 50; Less communication can yield truer scientific consensus (Zollman effect) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 214; Scientific discoveries emerge from communal slow accumulation, not lone genius — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 166 (+4 more)