Influential listeners: An experiment on persuasion bias in social networks

B-Tier
Journal: European Economic Review
Year: 2012
Volume: 56
Issue: 6
Pages: 1276-1288

Authors (4)

Score contribution per author:

0.503 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental investigation of persuasion bias, a form of bounded rationality whereby agents communicating through a social network are unable to account for repetitions in the information they receive. We find that, after repeated communication within a social network, social influence depends not only on being listened to by many others, but also on listening to many others. We show that persuasion bias can be viewed as an extreme case of a generalized boundedly rational updating rule in which agents receive more or less attention depending on how many other agents they listen to. The results indicate that behavior in the experiment is consistent with an updating rule according to which agents' social influence is proportional to their indegree.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:eecrev:v:56:y:2012:i:6:p:1276-1288
Journal Field
General
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-25