Information cascades in diets
Information cascades play a big role in the effects of social networks. Interestingly, we can see that individuals will place their decisions on certain things depending on choices made by previous individuals rather than solely relying on themselves to make a decision. Even very little information can result in a significant result, therefore, very few individuals’ actions can affect a lot more than they might think. We’ve seen such examples in class, for example, having more people indicate that they’re going to a party will influence others to also want to go to the party and vice versa.
This article talks about one example of a cascade – the belief that low fat diets prolong your life. Initially, some researchers believed this kind of chain reaction would occur: if one company supports the 100% low fat diet, and a person doesn’t agree, he should only partially endorse it (maybe a 60% low fat diet). The following person would assume from the partial support that the view was negative, and if he also has a negative view, would choose an even less favorable view (maybe a 10% low fat diet). As this continues, the actions would show how strongly they believe the diet. However, there really is no option of choosing a 50% low fat diet. In reality, people don’t care about the details of how it is endorsed, but rather, simply whether you do or not. Ultimately, large groups of people can reach a “consensus” without most of them really understanding the issue. Once a mass of people start a trend, the rest make the rational thought to do along because they figure the trend-setters can’t all be wrong. However, like the article says, sometimes “the danger is that you end up with the blind leading the blind”.
https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/how-the-low-fat-low-fact-cascade-just-keeps-rolling-along