Leading the “Herd Astray”: …Self-fulfilling Prophecies In An Artificial Cultural Market
What happens when false popularity becomes real…..and how can marketers, politicians, and “influencers” use this effect. Brilliant study via Princeton. If you’re interested in social psychology, persuasion, and group think—this paper is for you.
(Note: Hat tip to Marcelo for sending me this, simply brilliant!)
Click Here To Learn About Group Behavior & Self Fulfillin Prophecies (as PDF)
Paper Abstract (Via Princeton)
Individuals influence each others’ decisions about cultural products such as songs, books,and movies; but to what extent can the perception of success become a “self-fulfilling prophecy” ? We have explored this question experimentally by artificially inverting the true popularity of songs in an online “music market,” in which 12,207 participants listened to and downloaded songs by unknown bands. We found that most songs experienced self-fulfilling prophecies, in which perceived—but initially false—popularity became real over time. We also found, however, that the inversion was not self-fulfilling for the market as a whole, in part because the very best songs recovered their popularity in the long run. Moreover, the distortion of market information reduced the correlation between appeal and popularity, and led to fewer overall downloads. These results, although partial and speculative, suggest a new approach to the study of cultural markets, and indicate the potential of web-based experiments to explore the social psychological origin of other macrosociological phenomena.
Additional Excerpts (Via Princeton)
The influence that individuals have over each other’s behavior, moreover, can have important consequences for the behavior of cultural markets. In a recent study of an artificial music market, for example, when participants were aware of the previous decisions of others, the popularity of songs was determined in part by a “cumulative advantage” process where early success lead to future success (Salganik et al. 2006). These observed dynamics naturally raise the question of whether perceived success alone is sufficient to generate continued success. Can success in cultural markets, in other words, arise solely as a “self-fulfilling prophecy”—
Click Here To Learn About Group Behavior & Self Fulfillin Prophecies (as PDF)
