The Power of Influential People on the Population’s Opinions
A recent article from the Washington Post illustrates the power of a few influential people on the overall opinions of a population. First, a poll is used to show that the overall number of people who think baseball caps are fashionable compared to the number who don’t think so. The overall average of the population doesn’t matter as much as which type of people are the influencers in the population.
This graph shows that three times as many people do not think baseball caps are fashionable compared to those who do. However, the way the network is connected creates a situation where people in the network think that the average individual likes baseball caps.
This property of networks, called the “majority illusion”, was studied by Kristina Lerman at UCLA. The researchers believe that this effect has a great deal to do with how quick changes in public opinion occur and how trends are spread.
Another interesting outcome of the majority illusion is the creation of several paradoxes in social networks. The first is that, on average, most of your friends have more friends than you do. This is created by a few people that have a massive friend network, such as famous stars. Another paradox is that, on average, your friends drink more alcohol than you do. Among other paradoxes, the majority illusion can help explain the rapid change in opinions in America, such as the growing support of gay marriage. If the majority of highly connected people, or people at ultra-dense hubs in the network, believe a certain idea, then it will spread very quickly because others base their opinions and decisions off of those of others according to the article.
An interesting way to reverse this trend to some degree is to have accurate polls of the overall population- people can then see the true stance of the average person, rather than what it may appear due to the majority illusion and the effect of networks. I think that this phenomenon has a lot to due with the social network theory we have studied, and how people’s connections of connections affect them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/majority-illusion/