There have been blog posts already relating the idea of informational cascades and the Asch social conformity experiments done in psychology.

This website provides a useful overview of the Asch experiments but the basic concept of the experiment involves an individual having to answer a simple series of questions based on identify a line that is of equal length from a set of other lines. The twist to the experiment is that the subject is placed at the end of the ‘answering-sequence’, whereby he must first hear the answers of 3 – 5 confederates, who have been briefed to give clearly wrong answers. In this situation, upon hearing the wrong answer repeatedly, the subject is then confronted with the option of either believing in his clearly correct ‘signal’ and answer correctly, or to conform to the previous answers and give an erroneous answer. Previous blog posts have compared this experimental setup as being similar to the concept of information cascades as mentioned in class, since both involve a sense of listening to the ‘signals’ from other individual’s choices and making necessary ‘modifications’ to ones own choice.

That being said, it might be erroneous to actually relate the two paradigms so closely, since we quickly realize that subjects are probably having a signal of their own that they are almost 100% correct and hence should then not feel the need to conform. In terms of psychology, we call Asch’s experiments a case of pure normative social conformity, where an individual is willing to sacrifice something that he/she feels is clearly correct and go along with the crowd for something that is clearly wrong to them. In light of information cascades, let us consider the idea of informational social conformity. Consider the experiment done by Muzafer Sherif based on a determining the whether a particular light spot in a dark room was actually flickering, a phenomenon that truly is difficult to differentiate even for normal subjects, leading to almost chance-levels of answering in non-influenced situations. By putting subjects through the same setup as in the Asch experiments, we see an even greater conformity toward the common answer, where subjects, practically clueless about what answer to adopt, adopts the majority consensus in almost every case. This experiment would then be similar to individuals having nearly zero confidence in their own signal and then conforming to the social norm.

The confidence of signals in the case of information cascades probably lies between the two experimental extremes just described which then suggest levels of conformity to lie between the percentage conformity of the two experiments. That would still indicate a huge incidence of conformity, a realization that sits uncomfortably with anyone who hears of it.

Interestingly, a recent follow-up psychology experiment has thrown more questions into the mix of ideas attempting to explain this prevalence of conformity. This article suggests that a possible explanation toward the high incidence of conformity even in the Asch experiments could be possibly traced back to a perceptual origin. In particular,

“If social conformity was a result of conscious decision making, they reasoned, they should see changes in areas of the forebrain that deal with monitoring conflicts, planning and other higher-order mental activities.

But if the subjects’ social conformity stemmed from changes in perception, there should be changes in posterior brain areas dedicated to vision and spatial perception.

In fact, the researchers found that when people went along with the group on wrong answers, activity increased in the right intraparietal sulcus, an area devoted to spatial awareness, Dr. Berns said.

There was no activity in brain areas that make conscious decisions, the researchers found. But the people who made independent judgments that went against the group showed activation in the right amygdala and right caudate nucleus - regions associated with emotional salience.”

The experiment suggests some even more uncomfortable ideas about the idea of basic ‘truths’ compared to our actual perception of truths. It seems like the opinions of others can even perceptual alter our preferences, in a sense even altering our ‘own’ information signal, causing us to then modify our resultant choice. In that case, truth, in its essence is also called into question.