December 2008

Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market

Matthew J. Salganik and Duncan J. Watts

Individuals influence each others' decisions about cultural products such as songs, books, and movies; but to what extent can the perception of success become a "self-fulfilling prophecy"? We have explored this question experimentally by artificially inverting the true popularity of sons in an online "music market," in which 12,207 participants listened to and downloaded songs by unknown bands. We found that most songs experienced self-fulfilling prophecies, in which perceived--but initially false--popularity became real over time. We also found, however, that the inversion was not self-fulfilling for the market as a whole, in part because the very best songs recovered their popularity in the long run. Moreover, the distortion of market information reduced the correlation between appeal and popularity, and lead to fewer overall downloads. These results, although partial and speculative, suggest a new approach to the study of cultural markets, and indicate the potential of web-based experiments to explore the social psychological origin of other macrosociological phenomena.

I introduce two continuous measures of subculture involvement (ideological embeddedness and behavioral-relational involvement), and use them to examine the relationship between involvement in the jamband subculture and the affective meanings (evaluation, potency, and activity) associated with 18 roles that are relevant to that subculture. I expect the two measures of involvement to be related positively to the evaluation and potency of fourteen subculture roles (deadhead, drinker, drug user, environmentalist, festie, hippie, phishhead, rainbow person, rastafarian, raver, stoner, tourrat, vendor, wharrat), and negatively to the evaluation and potency of four authority roles (capitalist, nark, police officer, venue security officer). Using data from self-administered surveys (N=418 for familiar subculture and authority roles, N=219 for less familiar subculture roles), I find that subculture members learn meanings for relevant roles as a result of their socialization in the subculture; more specifically, as a result of their levels of ideological embeddedness and behavioral-relational involvement. This study enhances other investigations of subculture and meaning socialization. First, whereas past studies have examined between-group meaning variation, I investigate within-group meaning variation. A within-group analysis should indicate whether or not groups are heterogeneous, a finding that might reduce negative acts such as stereotyping. Second, I introduce two continuous measures designed to capture two dimensions of subculture involvement: ideological embeddedness and behavioral-relational involvement. Similar to previous conceptualizations of involvement, these two measures represent both attitudinal and behavioral involvement. Third, previous qualitative research within the related Grateful Dead subculture suggests that although not all subculture roles are equal in terms of evaluation, most subculture roles tend to be equal in potency. I further investigate this hypothesis using evaluation and potency to represent the affective meaning of roles, and I examine the implications of these findings for the jamband subculture.

Sympathy and Social Order

Social order is possible only if individuals forgo the narrow pursuit of self-interest for the greater good. For over a century, social scientists have argued that sympathy mitigates self-interest and recent empirical work supports this claim. Much less known about why actors experience sympathy in the first place, particularly in fleeting interactions with strangers, where cooperation is especially uncertain. We argue that perceived interdependence increases sympathy towards strangers. Results from our first study, a vignette experiment, support this claim and suggests a situational solution to social dilemmas. Meanwhile, previous work points to two strong individual-level predictors of cooperation: generalized trust and social values. In Study Two we address the intersection of situational and individual-level explanations to ask: does situational sympathy mediate these individual-level predictors of cooperation? Results from the second study, a laboratory experiment, support our hypotheses that sympathy mediates the generalized trust-cooperation link and the relationship between social values and cooperation. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the present work and directions for future research.