Everyday Cascades

In Hedstrom's article it says that an individual's decision is influenced by what others think is best, which makes the outcome unpredictable. This delves into the concept of how our personal opinions and estimates (private information) are affected by public information we receive from others. In class we performed an experiment, trying to replicate a mini information cascade. Professor Lazer would choose a city at random and asked us to write down our estimate of the population. Then we would go around and each person would read would say what they think it is, taking into consideration the people's estimates before them. However, we did not end up seeing an information cascade which could be the result of being aware of the experiment's goal at hand, or due to stubbornness of the group. Most of us in the classroom stuck to our personal and private estimates instead of trying to form a group trend.

Despite this small classroom discrepancy, it led us to discussing the fragility of cascades and how we see a cascade break and flip on a regular basis. Professor Lazer used the example of a long line outside a museum. People approaching the museum saw a lot of people lining up outside and assumed that this was the only line and they had to get in it. This decision is based purely on the public information they observed in front of them. However, Professor Lazer's friend decided to accept the small cost of getting his own private information and walked past the line into the museum. Doing this he discovered that there was a smaller line inside that they could get into, saving themselves hours of frustration and boredom. We see this happening in all sorts of scenarios where public information often trumps one's desire to use or find out their own private information.

In another example brought up, a student saw the classroom door closed and students waiting outside of it, and therefore used public information to assume that it was locked. However, the professor then walked up and simply opened the unlocked door and entered the classroom bursting the cascade and turning it in the other direction. The students could have given up a small cost to obtain their own personal information and check if the door was locked but instead just accepted the public's assumption as to avoid embarrassment. We see public information, or the majority's opinion trumping one's one opinion in many other studies and observations as well. As example of this is the Asch experiment. In this experiment a person enters a room with other people they assume are also participants, however they are part of the study. 2 blatantly long lines, and one short line are drawn on the board and they are asked to identify the shortest line. The people who are in on the experiment go first pointing at one of the long lines as the shortest, and so when it comes to the participant most often also point at a longer line even though their eyes tell them otherwise.