Social Effects on Behavior

I started to look up this topic, and found these interesting results:

"Free Will and the Mob: They made me do it" Philosophy & Reasoning Network - Tibi Cogitate (Think for Yourself)

Groups can create environments that diminish individual responsibility, but they can also exert their hold in another way. "There is a significant difference between mob behaviour, in which anonymity and imitation are the important factors, and the direct influence of a group, which involves personal allegiance to leaders and comrades," says Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an expert on Middle Eastern terrorism. Groups that recruit suicide bombers are among those that use the latter approach, building a sense of community and encouraging feelings of responsibility towards other group members: the "brotherhood mentality". Here, individuals take responsibility for their own actions within a culture where suicide bombing is seen as glorious. Then, by recording farewell messages to family and friends either on videotape or in writing, they make a commitment to their own martyrdom that they cannot renege on without losing face (New Scientist, 15 May 2004, p 34).

All of this is a long way from the situations that most of us face. Yet many of the decisions we make every day are heavily influenced by what others are doing. In a study published last year, for example, Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University in New York showed that the reason chart-topping pop songs are so much more popular than average is not because they are significantly better but because consumers are influenced by the buying habits of others (Science, vol 311, p 854). This is known as the social cascade effect, a phenomenon in which large numbers of people end up doing or thinking something on the basis of what others have done.

There are two mechanisms at work here, says Watts. "The first is social learning. The world is too complicated for each individual to solve problems on their own, so we rely on the information that is encoded in our social environment - we assume other people know things we don't." Then there is social coordination, where you want to do the same thing as other people not because you think it is better but because what matters is doing things together. "Liking the same song, movies, sports and books not only gives us something to talk about, but makes us feel like we're part of something larger than ourselves." As well as directing consumers' buying habits, these two forces can influence financial markets, protest movements, and even - through opinion polls - how we vote.

"Effect of “Social Norms” on Energy Usage," Cornell Info 204 - Networks, EV-NSDL (Expert Voices Speaking of Something Interesting)

An interesting extension of the “information cascade” effect. Researchers found that, given information about other people’s energy usage, people will likely adjust their own energy usage to match the “social norm” as presented to them. A study was done on a group in California to observe how their energy consumption behavior changed when given information about other people’s behaviors. The study showed that people whose intial usage was below the norm tend to increase their own usage with a “whew! I have some extra carbon to burn relative to everyone else” mindset and people whose energy usage was way above the norm tended to curb their own consumption.

"Wisdom of Crowds : Book Review," RK's Musings: Safe is risky

Cascade where the decision taken by the first few to a large extent has a considerable influence on the people who follow subsequently. Two examples mentioned by the author are Plank Road wave which hit the US in 1820 – 1840 and the standardization of screw across industries. Both are examples are information cascade, one resulting in a slate of bankrupt companies and other resulting in a beneficial effect to a lot of industries.

So,the pivotal question, is the information cascade good or bad? It is hard to come at one answer as the history is strewn with cases which have been good and bad. However, all said and done imitation of other’s decisions will happen and unless the group looks at the imitation and tries to take it with a pinch of salt, in all probability the true information cascades will be beneficial.