RealGM

I am ~95% sure that some time in the last year, on this board, I saw a link to a study that touched on the way a few preference outliers with hardened opinions can basically control group opinion and ruin "wisdom of the crowd" dynamics. Does that ring a bell to anyone? I'd love to find that study again and stupidly did not bookmark the topic.

Many thanks!

I think I remember this at some point too. Here is a study reference in an article that addresses some of those concepts:

http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_arti ... r/index_EN

I think the problem you're getting at is the anchoring effect. If people know how other people think, they often tend to move their opinions slightly toward those of others. Two problems with this:

1) that's not how it's supposed to work. Generally, the opinions should be independent and the "median" opinion is generally the correct one. When everyone shifts their opinion slightly due to nowledge of how others think, this median can shift to a new opinion

2)People who are extremely steadfast in their opinion generally won't budge while others do. If their opinions are correct, then group wisdom shifts toward the correct answer. But what if they're wrong?

Yeah, "anchoring" was the effect I was thinking of. Thanks for that link too.