How Social Influence Can Undermine the Wisdom of Crowd Effect.¶
Lorenz, J., Rauhut, H., Schweitzer, F., & Helbing, D. (2011). How Social Influence Can Undermine the Wisdom of Crowd Effect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(22), 9020-9025.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Conformity
- The prime gives analysts the vocabulary to ask which they are looking at.
This sourceExperiment showing even mild social influence correlates individual estimates and degrades collective accuracy. Live-verified (PNAS).
- The prime gives analysts the vocabulary to ask which they are looking at.
- Echo Chamber
- It predicts an amplification asymmetry: the same idea coming from three in-group members carries the rhetorical weight of three independent confirmations, when in a tight network it is one observation re-circulating — so a reasoner must discount apparent consensus by the network's connectivity.
This sourceShows that social influence in a connected group collapses independent estimates, manufacturing false consensus from re-circulating signal.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
The paper supports the core mechanism: social influence erodes independence and diversity and raises confidence without accuracy, but it does not model network connectivity or a discount rule.
“social influence triggers the convergence of individual estimates and substantially reduces the diversity of the group without improving its accuracy”
- It predicts an amplification asymmetry: the same idea coming from three in-group members carries the rhetorical weight of three independent confirmations, when in a tight network it is one observation re-circulating — so a reasoner must discount apparent consensus by the network's connectivity.
- Wisdom of the Crowds
- The prime names a conditional phenomenon, not a populist faith in numbers.
This sourceExperimental demonstration that even mild social influence correlates individual estimates and degrades collective accuracy, establishing that crowd wisdom is conditional on independence.
SupportedVerified against the work's full text
Lorenz et al. state the conditions under which crowd estimates are wise (large unbiased, independent errors) and show experimentally that mild social influence breaks it.
“The wisdom of crowds effect works if estimation errors of individuals are large but unbiased such that they cancel each other out.”
- The prime names a conditional phenomenon, not a populist faith in numbers.
Mechanisms¶
- Independent Scoring Round
- Its power rests on the independence that gives a crowd of estimates its accuracy in the first place — the same principle behind the wisdom of crowds, which collapses the moment raters see each other's numbers.
This sourceShows that independent estimates sustain wisdom-of-crowds accuracy, while social influence reduces diversity and undermines the aggregate result.
- Its power rests on the independence that gives a crowd of estimates its accuracy in the first place — the same principle behind the wisdom of crowds, which collapses the moment raters see each other's numbers.
Verification¶
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Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 2 of 4 citations: 1 supported, 1 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
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