Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
addClaim

Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment

Authors: Lev, Muchnik; Sinan, Aral; Sean J, Taylor;

Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment

Abstract

Follow the Leader? The Internet has increased the likelihood that our decisions will be influenced by those being made around us. On the one hand, group decision-making can lead to better decisions, but it can also lead to “herding effects” that have resulted in financial disasters. Muchnik et al. (p. 647 ) examined the effect of collective information via a randomized experiment, which involved collaboration with a social news aggregation Web site on which readers could vote and comment on posted comments. Data were collected and analyzed after the Web site administrators arbitrarily voted positively or negatively (or not at all) as the first comment on more than 100,000 posts. False positive entries led to inflated subsequent scores, whereas false negative initial votes had small long-term effects. Both the topic being commented upon and the relationship between the poster and commenter were important. Future efforts will be needed to sort out how to correct for such effects in polls or other collective intelligence systems in order to counter social biases.

Keywords

Behavior Control, Internet, Decision Making, Intelligence, Politics, Friends, Focus Groups, Social Environment, Bias, Public Opinion, Humans

  • BIP!
    Impact byBIP!
    selected citations
    These citations are derived from selected sources.
    This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    637
    popularity
    This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
    Top 0.1%
    influence
    This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    Top 1%
    impulse
    This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
    Top 0.1%
Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
637
Top 0.1%
Top 1%
Top 0.1%
Upload OA version
Are you the author of this publication? Upload your Open Access version to Zenodo!
It’s fast and easy, just two clicks!