Braess’ Paradox in Social Networks
MIT Technology Review is a global media company found at MIT which boasts in being “the first to report on important new technologies that will affect your organization, your career, your life.” This article was listed under emerging technologies; I thought this article was interesting because it applies a concept we learned onto other areas.
We learned that Braess’ Paradox is a counter-intuitive phenomena we discover in traffic flow. When we think of getting from point A to point B, we would think, the more roads, the less travelers per route, then reduced travel times, right? Unfortunately, the Braess’ Paradox shows this is not always the case. Adding another route can often cause even more congestion; likewise, although we may remove a road, instead of congestion, travel time decreases overall. This is caused by the best response changing with the addition of another choice. Although we may be better off ignoring the new addition made, people will act in their own self-interest, and choose the best response for them. The Nash equilibrium which is formed is thus not always the collective group’s optimal choice, but mutually the best responses on the individual level. According to the article, researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that this is not just applicable for roads, but can also be found and applied to social networks.
Social media is used to connect all sorts of people: family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers. It has also transformed to be another media for advertising and marketing. Krzysztof Apt and his fellow researchers found that Braess’ Paradox could also be found in social networks. In a network where people are given recommended products that were previously purchased by friends, more products and thus choices can paradoxically lead to a less optimal choice. In this network, where people make decisions on whether to purchase a product based on the decisions of their friends, we find adding more product choices actually decreased payoff. Reducing product choices creates a better outcome, as counter-intuitive as less roads causing more traffic. With more choices, it is difficult for consumers to make the optimal decision for their purpose. With more choices, one is overwhelmed. For example, when choosing a new phone, people like to research the products and its specifications. At some point though, when there are too many choices, individuals cannot look into all the possible products and its specifics. Instead, most will likely skim through them all and thus likely miss finding the optimal choice. Given less choices, people are more able to look deeply into the few offered and recognize the best for them. This is applicable to more than this setting; it could also have important effects on the market on when developers introduce their products to consumers. The same way, roads are closed to improve traffic flow, this concept can be applied to product development and release, benefiting both the manufacturers and the consumers.
A paradox, almost by definition, is intriguing in that our mental model of how things should work are not symmetrical to reality. The fact that Braess’ paradox can be applied to more than just traffic flow but also sporting performance and social networks is intriguing as it causes one to question if any other knowledge one has is actually preconceptions. It will be interesting to see other fields where this paradox may occur, when more isn’t always better, seeing the diverse fields this paradox applies and the changes made in limiting additions to allow optimal decisions to be made.