Information Cascade in Asch’s Conformity Experiment
In this society, it is inevitable that there will be connections within people as known as networks based on the concept that we learned in class. As long as there is a network, people tend to get influenced by other people. Even with any relationships, when one converses with one another, there is some influence whether it contrasts with one’s beliefs/thoughts or not. Based on this ubiquitous and common phenomenon, a concept called ‘information cascade’ is talked about among the scientists. A cascade occurs when one ignores their opinions and follow other’s beliefs and opinions.
In the Asch’s conformity experiment, it proves that people get influenced by others regardless of their own opinions. All the participants are given with a question.
By looking at the figure, the participant needs to answer which answer choice is closest to the target line. 12 trials out of 18 trials inform the real participants with the wrong answer. In other words, other participants will purposely say the wrong answer and the real participant needs to answer after listening to other participants’ answers. As a conclusion of this experiment, about 75% of participants conformed at least once over the 12 critical trials. This proves that people tend to abandon their opinions based on other people’s opinions. Applying to the concept of information cascade, if the real participant was supposed to answer after hearing one person wrongly answer, the real participant would follow their opinion. That is because there will be one low signal and one high signal which has the same proportion of low and high. When there is a tie, then the real participant tends to choose their own signal which would be their real opinion of the question. Since the real participant is chosen to answer after hearing everyone’s opinion, they will follow other’s opinions.