Navajas Joaquin, Armand Oriane, Moran Rani, Bahrami Bahador, Deroy Ophelia
Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
R Soc Open Sci. 2022 Jun 22;9(6):191497. doi: 10.1098/rsos.191497. eCollection 2022 Jun.
Classic and recent studies demonstrate how we fall for the 'tyranny of the majority' and conform to the dominant trend when uncertain. However, in many social interactions outside of the laboratory, there is rarely a clearly identified majority and discerning who to follow might be challenging. Here, we asked whether in such conditions herding behaviour depends on a key statistical property of social information: the variance of opinions in a group. We selected a task domain where opinions are widely variable and asked participants ( = 650) to privately estimate the price of eight anonymous paintings. Then, in groups of five, they discussed and agreed on a shared estimate for four paintings. Finally, they provided revised individual estimates for all paintings. As predicted (https://osf.io/s89w4), we observed that group members converged to each other and boosted their confidence following social interaction. We also found evidence supporting the hypothesis that the more diverse groups show greater convergence, suggesting that the variance of opinions promotes herding in uncertain crowds. Overall, these findings empirically examine how, in the absence of a clear majority, the distribution of opinions relates to subjective feelings of confidence and herding behaviour.
经典研究和近期研究表明，我们是如何陷入“多数人的暴政”，并在不确定时顺应主流趋势的。然而，在实验室之外的许多社会互动中，很少有明确确定的多数群体，辨别该追随谁可能具有挑战性。在此，我们探讨在这种情况下，从众行为是否取决于社会信息的一个关键统计属性：群体中意见的方差。我们选择了一个意见差异很大的任务领域，要求650名参与者私下估计八幅匿名画作的价格。然后，他们以五人一组的形式，对四幅画作进行讨论并商定一个共同的估计价格。最后，他们对所有画作给出修订后的个人估计价格。正如预测的那样（https://osf.io/s89w4），我们观察到小组成员在社会互动后相互趋同，并增强了信心。我们还发现证据支持这样的假设，即意见分歧越大的群体趋同程度越高，这表明意见的方差会促使不确定人群中的从众行为。总体而言，这些发现从实证角度研究了在没有明确多数群体的情况下，意见分布与信心的主观感受以及从众行为之间的关系。
