In the past few classes we’ve been discussing how ideas and preferences travel virally through a population until they hit a cluster. A principle assumption throughout these exercises has been the intelligence and logical behavior of the individual. It’s important that once an individual with better information has spoken out against the trend that the individuals who follow recognize his/her unusual behavior and weight their responses accordingly. However, unlike us, the majority of people are unaware as to how information cascades form, grow, and eventually stop. In fact, you’ve probably seen other’s buying a product just because everyone else has (e.g. the iPod, some fashion trends), after all how can so many people be wrong? Advertisers even have a name for this, it’s called the Bandwagon Effect.

Unfortunately, information cascades are not always as innocuous as product fads. In almost every major conflict or breakdown of society, people have lost their lives for thinking differently to the accepted norm. Breaking an information cascade requires that enough people signal their true beliefs, regardless of the consequences. But that doesn’t happen when you’re likely to get killed or alienated for speaking out; then the cascade becomes an incessant movement, destroying resistance before it can even form.

It’s important for all of us to watch out for negative information cascades and do our best to prevent them.

Stop and think before you help ruin someone’s life by conforming to the majority opinion.