Duncan Watts
UM Networks Seminar
Thu, Sept. 28th 12-1:30pm
West Hall 340
"The paradoxical nature of success in cultural markets: An
experimental approach"
Cultural objects, like movies, books, and music, vary greatly in
their success, suggesting that successful and unsuccessful objects
are qualitatively different; yet, paradoxically, success in cultural
markets appears highly unpredictable. In this talk I argue that
social influence, in the form of information about the decisions of
others, can resolve the paradox. To explore the counterintuitive
effects of social influence, I will discuss the results of a series
of four experiments (total n = 27,267), conducted via a website where
subjects could listen to and download new pop songs. By controlling
the information that subjects received about the behavior of others,
we observed directly the effects of social influence, finding that it
increased the inequality and the unpredictability of outcomes
simultaneously; and that under some conditions the perceived success
of a song became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Duncan Watts is associate professor of sociology at Columbia
University where he leads the Collective Dynamics Group (http://
cdg.columbia.edu/). His research examines the ways in which theories
and applications have come together in the Information Age. His books
include Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, The Structure
and Dynamics of Networks, and Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks
between Order and Randomness.
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