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Hundredth Monkey Effect and Information Cascade

The hundredth monkey effect is a hypothetical phenomenon in which a new behavior or idea is said to spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea. This concept is closely related to the information cascade model we learnt in class and demonstrates how it works in the animal world.

The story of the hundredth monkey effect was published in Lyall Watson’s foreword to Lawrence Blair’s Rhythms of Vision in 1975. Some scientists were conducting a study of macaque monkeys on the Japanese island of Kōjima in 1952. These scientists observed that some of these monkeys learned to wash sweet potatoes in the water, and once a critical number of these monkeys was reached, i.e., the hundredth monkey, this previously learned practice instantly spread across the water to other troupes of monkeys on nearby islands without any contact between the troupes. This phenomenon correlates to the information cascade model in that it shows how ideas can spread quickly once they hit a certain level of acceptance. The certain level of acceptance matches with the tipping point in advertising we discussed in class.

The researchers also observed the following pattern which suggests the information cascade process based on network structure:

  1. The young monkeys first teach their contemporaries and immediate family, who all benefit from the new behavior and teach it to their contemporaries;
  2. If the parents or their contemporaries (or their parents) are too old, they do not adopt the behavior;
  3. Once the initial group have children, the dynamic changes from teaching previous and current generations, to the next generation learning by observation.

We can see the monkey troupe as a network system, with each monkey is a node. There are strong ties between contemporaries and immediate family members, because they probably hang out all the time thus have more contact with each other. Monkeys with other relationships have weak ties between each other. Also, compared to old monkeys, young monkeys are more open to new things, so they are easier to learn this behavior. According to researchers’ observation, the trick did spread more quickly through strong ties (observation 1&3 between contemporaries and family members including children) and slowly through weak ties. Also, there are monkeys who are more easily to be persuaded to mimic this behavior (relatively young ones) versus old monkeys who are less open to new things. In this way, this phenomenon shows that information cascade not only works in human society with actual flows of information, including languages and text, but also among animals where observation and mimic also contain and transfer ample information within their troupes and are strong enough to influence their choices and behaviors.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect#:~:targetText=The%20hundredth%20monkey%20effect%20is,or%20acknowledge%20the%20new%20idea.

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