An Experimental Study of Persuasion Bias and Social Influence in Networks

Jordi Brandts, Ayça Giritligil () and Roberto Weber

No 2014-03, BELIS Working Papers from BELIS, Istanbul Bilgi University

Abstract: In many areas of social life individuals receive information about a particular issue of interest from multiple sources. When these sources are connected through a network then proper aggregation of this information by an individual involves taking into account the structure of this network. The inability to aggregate properly may lead to various types of distortions. In our experiment a number of agents all want to find out the value of a particular parameter unknown to all. Agents receive private signals about the parameter and agents can communicate their estimates of the parameter repeatedly through a network, the structure of which is known by all players. We present results from experiments with four different networks. We find that the information of agents who have more outgoing links in a network gets more weight in the information aggregation of the other agents than it optimally should. Our results are consistent with the model of “persuasion bias” of De Marzo et al. (2003) and at odds with an alternative heuristic according to which the most influential agents are those with more incoming links.

Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-net and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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http://repeck.bilgi.org.tr/RePEc/beb/wpbels/BelisWP_BELIS03.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: An experimental study of persuasion bias and social influence in networks (2015)
Working Paper: An Experimental Study of Persuasion Bias and Social Influence in Networks (2015)
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