Pressure to Follow the Crowd
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.2499
When individuals are faced with decisions, their tendency is to follow the crowd, which could easily be the wrong decision. The link above gives a clear explanation about some of the cons of following the crowd. The link describes how people believe they have free will depending on what they think about their own behavior. People who do believe they have free will get a direct benefit in deriving more meaning in their life. The link conducted a study to prove that people (who were under high self-awareness) believed their life had more meaning when they made independent choices on decisions. Those who had constricted decisions in their decisions believed life had less meaning. Therefore, if individuals act on their own information, they get the benefit of meaning in their life.
In lecture, many reasons for following the crowd were discussed. There are two main reasons why individuals would want to follow the crowd: people gain useful information when they see the crowd’s decisions, and people get a certain assurance and security when they follow the crowd. This is contrary to what the link describes, which may provide important information about information cascades.
When people follow the crowd and use information based on the crowd’s decisions, this creates an information cascade where everyone will make the same decision. However, these information cascades are created based on little information. As soon as someone decides to follow their own signal (for reasons based on the link), they could break the information cascade and allow more independent decisions to be made. This further solidifies the idea that information cascades are fragile.