Testing Unpredictability with Multiple Worlds

这个项目使用了一个“多重世界”的实验范式来检验这样一种预测，即政治或人口群体之间的意见分歧可能是武断的、不可预测的，就像文化时尚已经被证明的那样。最近的研究表明，诸如书籍、音乐和电影等文化产物的受欢迎程度可能取决于最初的看法。这些通常是武断和不可预测的，但随后会引发巨大的意见瀑布。类似的动态可以解释政治党派或人口群体（如年轻人和老年人，男性和女性）之间出现的分歧。也就是说，当最初的一群明显的党派不同意时，随后来自双方的意见产生者可能会以此为线索，告诉他们应该如何行动，从而以层叠的方式进一步扩大群体之间的分歧。研究结果将有助于揭示可能扩大社会不和谐的任意社会过程，从而为改善其影响提供可能性，从而为国家福利服务。这个项目的假设是，群体之间的分裂可以由一种类似于Salganik， Dodds和Watts（2006）在他们对文化成功的反复无常的调查中发现的动态驱动。他们创建了一个试验性的音乐下载网站，其中包含多个世界，用户只能看到同一实验世界中那些人的下载。研究发现，在用户可以看到周围其他人的活动的世界里，意见更趋一致。为了验证这个项目的假设，将创建一个网站，要求实验参与者登记他们的政治和人口统计关系。然后将他们分成不同的实验世界，包括一个独立的世界（对照）。在所有世界中，用户将对各种问题进行投票。在实验条件下，用户将能够看到他们世界中所有群内和群外成员的意见。相比之下，对照组的人在没有看到其他人的意见的情况下投票。有待检验的预测是，群体之间最初的意见差异是任意的，因此意见和群体之间的联系方向在不同的世界会有所不同，但群体的影响会放大这些差异，导致差异比偶然预期的更强。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project uses a "multiple worlds" experimental paradigm to test the prediction that divisions of opinion between political or demographic groups may be arbitrary and unpredictable as cultural fads have been shown to be. Recent research shows that the popularity of cultural artifacts, such as books, music, and movies, may be contingent on initial opinions. These are often arbitrary and unpredictable, yet subsequently can drive huge opinion cascades. A similar dynamic may explain the divisions that emerge between political partisans or demographic groups (e.g. young and old, men and women). That is, when an initial group of visible partisans disagree, subsequent opinion generators from each side may take this a cue to how they should act, furthering the divide between the groups in a cascading fashion. Findings will serve the national welfare by shedding light on arbitrary social processes that may amplify societal discord and so offering the possibility of ameliorating their effects.The hypothesis of this project is that division between groups can be driven by a dynamic similar to that found by Salganik, Dodds, and Watts (2006) in their investigation of the fickleness of cultural success. They created an experimental music download site, with multiple worlds in which users could only see the downloads of those in their same experimental world. Findings were that the opinions converged more in the worlds where users could see the activity of others around them. To test the hypothesis of this project, a website will be created where experiment participants will be asked to register their political and demographic affiliations. They then will be divided into different experimental worlds, including one independent world (a control). In all worlds, users will vote on various issues. In experimental conditions, users will be able to see the opinions for all in-group and out-group members in their world. By contrast, those in the control condition will vote without seeing other people's opinions. The prediction to be tested is that initial opinion differences between groups will be arbitrary, such that the direction of the association between opinions and groups will vary between worlds, but that the group influence will amplify these differences, leading variations to be stronger than expected by chance.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.