Influential Listeners: An Experiment on Persuasion Bias In Social Networks

Corazzini, Luca; Pavesi, Filippo; Petrovich, Beatrice; Stanca, Luca

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1840565

Cited by 19 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…These papers do not focus on information aggregation. The foundational model of naive information aggregation in 4 Also closely related are the lab experiments on observational learning by Choi, Gale and Kariv (2012) who test for the implications of a Bayesian learning model in three-player networks; by Mueller-Frank and Neri (2014) who test for general properties of the rules of thumb people use in updating; and by Corazzini, Pavesi, Petrovich and Stanca (2012) and Brandts, Giritligil and Weber (2014) who test between different variants of boundedly rational models. These studies too feature restricted communication and perfect diffusion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treasure Hunt: Social Learning in the Field

Möbius

Phan

Szeidl

2015

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We seed noisy information to members of a real-world social network to study how information diffusion and information aggregation jointly shape social learning. Our environment features substantial social learning. We show that learning occurs via diffusion which is highly imperfect: signals travel only up to two steps in the conversation network and indirect signals are transmitted noisily. We then compare two theories of information aggregation: a naive model in which people double-count signals that reach them through multiple paths, and a sophisticated model in which people avoid double-counting by tagging the source of information. We show that to distinguish between these models of aggregation, it is critical to explicitly account for imperfect diffusion. When we do so, we find that our data are most consistent with the sophisticated tagged model.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treasure Hunt: Social Learning in the Field

Möbius

Phan

Szeidl

2015

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“…In particular, some studies (Farrell, 1988;Cooper et al, 1992) have looked at coordination games, and at how the availability of communication devices allows nodes to reach efficient equilibria. Meanwhile, the literature on opinion formation has studied experimentally network games in which the only available communication device is the ability to observe one's neighbors' past actions (Corazzini et al, 2012;Battiston and Stanca, 2015). In this paper, we bridge the two streams by analyzing a game of coordination in which imitation can possibly affect choices.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two interpretations of this result are possible. The first is that, as observed by Corazzini et al (2012), subjects fail to account for repeated informationi.e., for the fact that their "second" neighbor in turn receives information from themselves. A complementary explanation is that, as observed by Battiston and Stanca (2015), subjects tend to attribute more importance to neighbors who are themselves better connected in the network.…”

Section: Network Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Believe it or Not: Experimental Evidence on Sunspot Equilibria with Social Networks

Battiston

Harrison

2019

SSRN Journal

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Models with sunspot equilibria have long been a topic of interest among economists. It then becomes an interesting question to ask whether there is empirical support for their existence. One approach to answer this question is through lab experiments. Such equilibria have been successfully reproduced in the lab, but little is known about their determinants and, most importantly, about their convergence dynamics: when, and how, do individuals assign a coordination role to signals which are publicly known to have no fundamental value? In order to answer this question, we run a laboratory experiment in which individuals are connected through a network, and each of them directly observes the actions of her neighbors as well as aggregated information. By manipulating both the type of information available and the structure of the network, we study the extent to which players are able to converge, and how convergence happens over time. We show that general information about other players' behavior hinders coordination, while information specifically related to the sunspot enhances it.

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“…In laboratory experiments (and in lab in the field experiments), theoretical models can be directly tested. For instance, Corazzini et al (2012), Grimm and Mengel (2016), and Chandrasekhar et al (2016) compare sophisticated models of Bayesian learning with simple models of naïve learning in settings in which their predictions diverge. The common conclusion is that the observations are more often consistent with the simple models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, Choi et al (2005), Ç elen and Kariv (2005), and Ç elen et al (2010) study predictions of social learning models experimentally. A caveat of this theory-testing approach is that the participants are confronted with highly stylized tasks such as guessing an average (or its sign) of randomly drawn numbers (Corazzini et al, 2012;Ç elen and Kariv, 2005;Ç elen et al, 2010) or finding an abstract true state (Choi et al, 2005;Grimm and Mengel, 2016;Chandrasekhar et al, 2016). It is questionable how the investigated learning behavior transfers to settings with real questions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The strength of weak leaders: an experiment on social influence and social learning in teams

et al. 2019

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We investigate how the selection process of a leader affects team performance with respect to social learning. We use a lab experiment in which an incentivized guessing task is repeated in a star network with the leader at the center. Leader selection is either based on competence, on self-confidence, or made at random. Teams with random leaders do not underperform compared to competent leaders, and they even outperform teams whose leader is selected based on self-confidence. The reason is that random leaders are better able to use the knowledge within the team. We can show that it is the declaration of the selection procedure which makes non-random leaders overly influential. We set up a horse race between several rational and naïve models of social learning to investigate the microlevel mechanisms. We find that overconfidence and conservatism contribute to the fact that overly influential leaders mislead their team.

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Influential Listeners: An Experiment on Persuasion Bias In Social Networks

Cited by 19 publications

References 26 publications

Treasure Hunt: Social Learning in the Field

Treasure Hunt: Social Learning in the Field

Believe it or Not: Experimental Evidence on Sunspot Equilibria with Social Networks

The strength of weak leaders: an experiment on social influence and social learning in teams

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