Testing Unpredictability with Multiple Worlds

这个项目使用了“多个世界”的实验范式来测试这样的预测，即政治或人口群体之间的意见分歧可能是武断的和不可预测的，就像文化时尚已经被证明的那样。最近的研究表明，书籍、音乐和电影等文化艺术品的受欢迎程度可能取决于最初的看法。这些往往是武断和不可预测的，但随后可能会引发巨大的舆论瀑布。类似的动态可能解释了政治党派或人口群体(例如，年轻人和老年人，男性和女性)之间出现的分歧。也就是说，当最初一群可见的党派人士不同意时，双方随后的意见生成者可能会以此为线索，指示他们应该如何行动，从而以级联方式进一步加深两个群体之间的分歧。研究结果将有助于揭示可能放大社会不和谐的任意社会过程，从而提供改善其影响的可能性。该项目的假设是，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浮躁的调查中发现的动态驱动。他们创建了一个实验性音乐下载网站，其中有多个世界，用户只能看到他们在同一个实验世界中的下载。研究发现，在用户可以看到周围其他人的活动的世界里，观点更趋于一致。为了检验这个项目的假设，将创建一个网站，要求实验参与者登记他们的政治和人口背景。然后，它们将被分成不同的实验世界，包括一个独立的世界(一个对照)。在所有领域，用户都会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组内和组外成员的意见。相比之下，那些处于控制状态的人会投票，而不会看到其他人的意见。需要检验的预测是，团体之间的初始意见分歧将是任意的，因此意见和团体之间的关联方向将因世界而异，但团体的影响将放大这些差异，导致差异比预期的更强。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.