How the choices of others affects the decisions we make
https://www.natureasia.com/en/research/highlight/9914
How the choices of others affects the decisions we make
The cascading effect of behavior that we have learned about in class can be observed in many different situations of everyday life. For example if you consider something as simple as choosing where to eat lunch on campus you will very likely be swayed in your decision by considering the behavior of others. If you know that Trillium is extremely busy during the time in which you want to get lunch, then you may end up opting for a less crowded option somewhere else. The behavior of your friends also comes into play many times when making decisions like this. It is not a bad thing to follow the decisions of your friends in regards to deciding where to eat, but where it could be harmful is when other people engage in risky behavior and it causes you to do the same. Essentially the cascading effect of behavior is peer pressure to act a certain way.
We can see especially in the lives of young people how the cascading effect of behavior can have a negative affect on behavior. If your peers around you are partaking in risky behavior then you will probably also engage in the same risky behavior because you no longer perceive it as being “high-risk” since many people around you are doing it. A good example of this would be vaping/juuling/smoking. If your friends do it than you are more likely to start as well. The article I linked above talks about this phenomenon of cascading behavior in relation to making risky gambling decisions vs. more safe gambling decisions.
“Pearl Chiu and colleagues studied 70 human participants as they made decisions between risky (less probable, but higher payoff) and safe (more probable, but lower payoff) options in a gambling task, either on their own or after observing the choices of others. Participants were more likely to make a choice if they had observed that others had previously made the same choice. This effect was stronger when the choices of others were aligned with a participant’s own risk preferences: risk-averse participants were more likely to be influenced by another’s choice of a safe option, and vice versa.”
The people that have the potential to be the most negatively affected by cascading behavior are those who already are likely to engage in risky behavior before even considering what others are doing. When someone is considering doing something risky and then sees others also doing something risky, they are extremely likely to act on that risky behavior because they feel validated by seeing others also being risky. The opposite happens as well and people who are risk-averse can observe people making safe choices and then also choose the safe choice.