Robert Shiller recently made an application about the incompleteness of information cascades and its dangerous attributes to the recent housing bubble. But what if the information that cascades is more opinionated than informational? An example of this is the critic industry. How many of us have seen a movie or eaten at a restaurant at the recommendation of a professional critic? More importantly, how many of us realized how much we hated the movie and were disgusted by the same food that this professional critic had upheld in such high regard? Each person develops their own opinions and tastes, but the influence of a published critic may affect enough to try otherwise.

There is a small population of people who have built their careers on forming their opinions. Movies are a good example of how people will make the decision to see a movie as a result of a good review only to be severely disappointed afterwards. It is interesting that people will trust complete strangers to have the same taste as they do and what is more interesting is that most people will still be affected by the opinion of that same critic later on. The truth is that it is hard to ignore another person’s opinion. It is almost impossible to make an independent decision.

Of course, there are famous critics who are famous for a reason: their opinions and evaluations are consistent and agreed on by many people who followed their recommendations. Critics eventually build a reputation and their information cascade may disappear because their fans may just trust the critic’s to make their decisions for them. Robert Parker is a renowned wine critic whose rating system can mean instant celebrity for producers overnight.                        

There are ways people try to resist this information cascade by creating sites like imdb.com. These sites allow people to sound off their opinions and for people to decide based on individual opinions as well as a “popular” opinion. Imdb.com even creates an aggregate user rating curve.

Shiller, Robert. “How a bubble stayed under the radar”, New York Times. March 2, 2008.

Gross, Jeffrey. “Don’t listen to critics”, The217. February 26, 2008.