relation: https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/50585/ title: The marginal majority effect: when social influence produces lock-in creator: Gelastopoulos, Alexandros creator: Analytis, Pantelis creator: Le Mens, Gael creator: Van De Rijt, Arnout subject: B- ECONOMIE ET FINANCE description: 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. publisher: arXiv date: 2024-07-22 type: Monograph type: NonPeerReviewed format: text language: en identifier: https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/50585/1/2408.03952v1.pdf identifier: Gelastopoulos, Alexandros , Analytis, Pantelis, Le Mens, Gael and Van De Rijt, Arnout (2024) The marginal majority effect: when social influence produces lock-in. arXiv, Toulouse relation: http://tse-fr.eu/pub/130403 language: en