Herd behavior and cultural niche construction
How popularity signals shape innovation, diversity, and long-term cultural trajectories.
Popularity signals can reshape collective behavior by altering what people attend to, select, and build upon. This project studies the long-term consequences of herd behavior for innovation and cultural evolution, particularly in environments where cumulative advantage amplifies already-popular cultural variants.
A central question is whether reliance on popularity information improves collective outcomes—such as quality, efficiency, and coordination—or instead suppresses exploration and reduces cultural diversity. We also examine how cumulative advantage may stabilize arbitrary cultural traits, contributing to cultural niche construction and path-dependent cultural trajectories.
What we do
- Conduct large-scale experiments in which participants interact with evolving markets of cultural artifacts (e.g., images), selecting one artifact to modify and returning their creation to the population.
- Manipulate the visibility of popularity signals to test causal effects on exploration, diversity, and cumulative improvement.
- Track diffusion, lineage branching, and convergence dynamics across many generations.
- Model how social information shapes innovation trajectories and the emergence of stable cultural conventions.
Why it matters
Herd behavior underlies many modern social dynamics, from viral media and cultural trends to scientific citation cascades and market bubbles. Understanding how popularity signals shape collective learning and innovation is crucial for designing platforms and institutions that balance coordination, diversity, and creative exploration. This work informs theories of cultural evolution, collective intelligence, and the design of social information systems.
Related publications and links
- placeholder: herd behavior paper
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