How Social Networking Influences our Choices

Researchers in the fields of psychology and behavioral studies are currently fascinated by the attraction that popular social media exerts on each individual, and are very surprised at the fact that it's not us who influence others, but others who make their point of view more clear than we do. So, in light of this fact, they have set out to use computer sciences, mathematics, psychology and other similar disciplines, in order to get a glimpse of how being a user on a social media site changes the way we talk, act, what we desire, what we buy, and so on.

Machine learning and game theory expert Michael Kearns, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, is currently using a technique known as Controlled Voting Experiments to analyze just how interactions between groups occur.

He has thus far determined that even a small minority can make its point of view so clear that it would win over a vast one, even though at first this may seem like a long shot. In other words, by saying what they believe strong enough, minority members manage to get everyone else on their side, even though the others disapprove at first.

Yahoo! networking expert and physicist Duncan Watts is arguing that there is a small number of individuals, known as influentials, which controls and commands the trends that the rest of the planet's population is subjected to. “For all this discussion about influentials and how they drive word-of-mouth, there's no empirical evidence, no real theory,” he says, but pinpoints that Kearns' approach on the matter might yield some very interesting results.

In the experiments, Kearns created small networks, connecting unaware individuals to each other and then making them choose between two colors. If all group members agreed within a minute upon any color, they would receive money. But each of the participants was told that they would get a certain amount of cash if, for example, red won over blue, or vice versa. “There's this tension between all of them wanting to collectively agree but selfishly wanting everyone to agree on their preferred color,” Kearns explains about the tests.

In an additional trial, participants were divided into 8 groups, and each given a few songs. When asked to rate them, the ones that made no. 1 in a group fell as low as no. 42 in another. But when groups knew what the others were choosing, the same song could remarkably be found around roughly the same position in their charts. “We assume things are popular because that's what people want. But this is showing that's wrong – people have no idea what they want,” Watts, who has conducted another study on 14,000 volunteers, shares.