Information Cascades: Their Succeeding Affect on the 2016 Election
The United States of America can reasonably be viewed as a large network- all those living within these confines are connected and thus form a dynamic, intricate network. Therefore, it is realistic for ones behaviors or decisions to influence another’s behaviors or decisions. Social pressures systematically aggregate individual behavior and ultimately produce “collective outcomes”. After learning about information cascades in depth, I have culminated my previous and newfound knowledge about cascades and generated a comforting reason as to how this election turned out the way it did.
It is apparent that there are several settings where it is more than rational for an individual to imitate the choices of others, even if the individuals own information suggests an alternative choice. This situation may be a restaurant choice for dinner that night, the next phone you wish to receive, or more importantly – which president to elect. Over the past week politicians and economists have expressed their complete and disillusioned shock about the election results, stating how almost no one saw the results coming. This may be due to the way the media portrayed the campaign, or due to humans “secretly voting for trump”. However, more vitally, this may be due to the theory of information cascades- I predict one main reason as to how this election occurred is due to this specific theory.
Millions of individuals were on the fence of whom to elect this year, arguing, “both candidates were awful, they simply could not decide”. Throughout the election, Trump remained in the lead for the majority of time, and the announcers continuously spent time announcing the minimum number of states trump needed to lead him to his now “very obtainable” victory. During this tumultuous time of voting, thousands of candidates remained on the fence, and rather than voting based off of their own private information, they could have inferred from previous decisions, voting for Trump, that this decision was more popular and thus was the more powerful choice. In this case, an information cascade has occurred. More interestingly, a cascade suggests individuals imitating the behavior of others, but not mindless imitation. Rather, it is drawing information based off others’ behaviors, due to your personal limited information. The book further states, that while this previously stated reason might be the case, it may also occur due to social pressure to conform, with no underlying informational cause. The difficulty lies in dissecting which phenomena it was. Did America conform due to social pressures, or did America intently draw rational inferences more those who previously voted?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-bad-looks-good/201608/admit-it-you-are-secretly-voting-donald-trump-right