Information Cascades in Art–Why do some art pieces look so similar?
If you’ve ever been to an art museum, you may have noticed that some art pieces from a certain time period seem to look very similar to each other. The hues, shading, style, and colors always follow the ‘trend’ of the era, and even the symbolism–thought, concept, and idea that the artwork seeks to introduce and make viewers think on a higher level–has a deeper message from the time period that the artwork was created.
A lot of this similarity has to do with the creative process behind creating these art pieces–student artists often watch more experienced illustrators draw and discuss the design choices that they make in their work. Even though these newer artists are encouraged to experiment with different practices on their individual projects, many people take inspiration from the styles of their teachers and build upon the training that they’ve received. In essence, they are influenced to make a decision about their creative artistic process based on the decisions that their predecessors have made. This usually happens more when people are unsure about what decisions they should make. Since there is demonstrated success or failure from the art styles and pieces that their teachers or influential people in their era have produced, they are essentially ‘encouraged’ to copy other people’s behavior by learning from their choices. This is especially prevalent when choices are made in a sequential fashion and the phenomenon is known as an information cascade where guesses and decisions are influenced by previous patterns.
What are some potential problems that can be caused by this form of imitation? First, people have private information, which means that they get to observe what other people have done but not what they know. This means that each artist may have their own thoughts about what style or interpretation of a particular situation they want to display in their work, but we only really see what they choose to display in the end. This ultimately leads to a great negative impact on the creative output in art–unfamiliarity facilitates creativity in art because it encourages artists to think independently and figure out alternative styles of artistic representation that predecessors have not explored yet. Essentially, due to the cascade model, we see that sometimes other people’s decisions might not be correct but the first couple of decisions or guesses can have long-lasting effects on the ultimate group outcome. This is especially true in making creative decisions such as what patterns to use and what colors to use because there is no clear-cut ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it’s more about what you want your work to communicate and finding your own artistic choices.
In an information cascade, everyone has a bit of independent information and they put it all together to make a decision, they would have enough to make a good collective decision. This is especially true with art because if an artist knew about the unfamiliar styles that other artists were interested in experimenting with, it would help encourage them to find and implement new creative ideas and develop their own artistic work rather than fall under the influence of mimicry.
Sources:
https://happpyal.com/blogs/the-blog/imitation-vs-inspiration
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cogs.12442