@techreport{publications50585,
           month = {July},
          author = {Alexandros Gelastopoulos and Pantelis Analytis and Gael Le Mens and Arnout Van De Rijt},
          series = {arXiv},
       booktitle = {arXiv},
            type = {Working Paper},
         address = {Toulouse},
           title = {The marginal majority effect: when social influence produces lock-in},
       publisher = {arXiv},
            year = {2024},
     institution = {Universit{\'e} Toulouse Capitole},
        keywords = {social influence, self-reinforcing process, self-correcting process, marginal majority, lock-in},
             url = {https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/50585/},
        abstract = {People are influenced by the choices of others, a phenomenon observed across contexts in the social and behavioral sciences. Social influence can lock in an initial popularity advantage of an option over a higher quality alternative. Yet several experiments designed to enable social influence have found that social systems self-correct rather than lock-in. Here we identify a behavioral phenomenon that makes inferior lock-in possible, which we call the ?marginal majority effect?: A discontinuous increase in the choice probability of an option as its popularity exceeds that of a competing option. We demonstrate the existence of marginal majority effects in several recent experiments and show that lock-in always occurs when the effect is large enough to offset the quality effect on choice, but rarely otherwise. Our results reconcile conflicting past empirical evidence and connect a behavioral phenomenon to the possibility of social lock-in.}
}