
Open access
Date
2013-03-01Type
- Journal Article
Citations
Cited 34 times in
Web of Science
Cited 40 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics
Abstract
How do humans respond to indirect social influence when making decisions? We analysed an experiment where subjects had to guess the answer to factual questions, having only aggregated information about the answers of others. While the response of humans to aggregated information is a widely observed phenomenon, it has not been investigated quantitatively, in a controlled setting. We found that the adjustment of individual guesses depends linearly on the distance to the mean of all guesses. This is a remarkable, and yet surprisingly simple regularity. It holds across all questions analysed, even though the correct answers differ by several orders of magnitude. Our finding supports the assumption that individual diversity does not affect the response to indirect social influence. We argue that the nature of the response crucially changes with the level of information aggregation. This insight contributes to the empirical foundation of models for collective decisions under social influence. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000064735Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Scientific ReportsVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
Nature Publishing GroupSubject
Applied physics; Biological physics; Psychology and behaviour; Statistical physics, thermodynamics and nonlinear dynamicsOrganisational unit
03682 - Schweitzer, Frank / Schweitzer, Frank
More
Show all metadata
Citations
Cited 34 times in
Web of Science
Cited 40 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics