IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jesaex/v4y2018i1d10.1007_s40881-018-0050-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A shared identity promotes herding in an information cascade game

Author

Listed:
  • Sebastian Berger

    (University of Bern)

  • Christoph Feldhaus

    (University of Münster)

  • Axel Ockenfels

    (University of Cologne)

Abstract

Our research addresses the effect of shared vs. mixed group identities in an information cascade game. We vary whether subjects always choose after a decision maker who shares the same identity or after a decision maker with a different identity. We find that subjects’ inclination to follow their predecessor is stronger in groups uniquely consisting of ingroup members compared to mixed groups. We relate this result to recent social cognition research.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastian Berger & Christoph Feldhaus & Axel Ockenfels, 2018. "A shared identity promotes herding in an information cascade game," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 4(1), pages 63-72, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jesaex:v:4:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s40881-018-0050-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s40881-018-0050-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40881-018-0050-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40881-018-0050-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary E. Bolton & Christoph Feldhaus & Axel Ockenfels, 2016. "Social Interaction Promotes Risk Taking in a Stag Hunt Game," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 17(3), pages 409-423, August.
    2. Mathias Drehmann & Jörg Oechssler & Andreas Roider, 2005. "Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets: An Internet Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1403-1426, December.
    3. Scott E. Carrell & Marianne E. Page & James E. West, 2010. "Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1101-1144.
    4. Angela A. Hung & Charles R. Plott, 2001. "Information Cascades: Replication and an Extension to Majority Rule and Conformity-Rewarding Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1508-1520, December.
    5. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    6. Markus Noth & Martin Weber, 2003. "Information Aggregation with Random Ordering: Cascades and Overconfidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 166-189, January.
    7. Jacob K. Goeree & Thomas R. Palfrey & Brian W. Rogers & Richard D. McKelvey, 2007. "Self-Correcting Information Cascades," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 733-762.
    8. George A. Akerlof & Rachel E. Kranton, 2000. "Economics and Identity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 715-753.
    9. Georg Weizsacker, 2010. "Do We Follow Others When We Should? A Simple Test of Rational Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2340-2360, December.
    10. McLeish, Kendra N. & Oxoby, Robert J., 2007. "Identity, Cooperation, and Punishment," IZA Discussion Papers 2572, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Fahr, René & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2011. "Who follows the crowd—Groups or individuals?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 200-209.
    12. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Christoph March & Sebastian Kr?gel, 2013. "Do We Follow Others When We Should? A Simple Test of Rational Expectations: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2633-2642, October.
    13. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    14. Anderson, Lisa R & Holt, Charles A, 1997. "Information Cascades in the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 847-862, December.
    15. Dominitz, Jeff & Hung, Angela A., 2009. "Empirical models of discrete choice and belief updating in observational learning experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 94-109, February.
    16. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    17. Christopher Avery & Susan Athey & Peter Zemsky, 2000. "Mentoring and Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 765-786, September.
    18. Dorothea Kübler & Georg Weizsäcker, 2005. "Are Longer Cascades More Stable?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 330-339, 04/05.
    19. Huck, Steffen & Oechssler, Jorg, 2000. "Informational cascades in the laboratory: Do they occur for the right reasons?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 661-671, December.
    20. Gino, Francesca & Shang, Jen & Croson, Rachel, 2009. "The impact of information from similar or different advisors on judgment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 287-302, March.
    21. Bogaçhan Çelen & Shachar Kariv, 2004. "Distinguishing Informational Cascades from Herd Behavior in the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 484-498, June.
    22. Eric P. Bettinger & Bridget Terry Long, 2005. "Do Faculty Serve as Role Models? The Impact of Instructor Gender on Female Students," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 152-157, May.
    23. Le Coq, Chloé & Tremewan, James & Wagner, Alexander K., 2015. "On the effects of group identity in strategic environments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 239-252.
    24. Roy Chen & Yan Chen, 2011. "The Potential of Social Identity for Equilibrium Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2562-2589, October.
    25. Yan Chen & Sherry Xin Li, 2009. "Group Identity and Social Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 431-457, March.
    26. Ockenfels, Axel & Werner, Peter, 2014. "Beliefs and ingroup favoritism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 453-462.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. G. Rejikumar & Aswathy Asokan-Ajitha & Sofi Dinesh & Ajay Jose, 2022. "The role of cognitive complexity and risk aversion in online herd behavior," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 585-621, June.
    2. March, Christoph & Ziegelmeyer, Anthony, 2020. "Altruistic observational learning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    3. Insler, Michael & Rahman, Ahmed S. & Smith, Katherine, 2021. "Tracking the Herd with a Shotgun — Why Do Peers Influence College Major Selection?," IZA Discussion Papers 14412, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Michael Färber & Melissa Coutinho & Shuzhou Yuan, 2023. "Biases in scholarly recommender systems: impact, prevalence, and mitigation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2703-2736, May.
    5. Wenbo Zou & Xue Xu, 2023. "Ingroup bias in a social learning experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(1), pages 27-54, March.
    6. Xiao, Qin & Yan, Meilan & Zhang, Dalu, 2023. "Commodity market financialization, herding and signals: An asymmetric GARCH R-vine copula approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    7. Zakharov, Alexei & Bondarenko, Oxana, 2021. "Social status and social learning," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    8. Marwan Mohamed Abdeldayem & Saeed Hameed Al Dulaimi, 2020. "Investors’ herd behavior related to the pandemic-risk reflected on the GCC stock markets," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 38(2), pages 563-584.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Van Parys, Jessica & Ash, Elliott, 2018. "Sequential decision-making with group identity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1-18.
    2. Wenbo Zou & Xue Xu, 2023. "Ingroup bias in a social learning experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(1), pages 27-54, March.
    3. Lukas Meub & Till Proeger & Hendrik Hüning, 2017. "A comparison of endogenous and exogenous timing in a social learning experiment," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 12(1), pages 143-166, April.
    4. Georg Weizsacker, 2010. "Do We Follow Others When We Should? A Simple Test of Rational Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2340-2360, December.
    5. Duffy, John & Hopkins, Ed & Kornienko, Tatiana, 2021. "Lone wolf or herd animal? Information choice and learning from others," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    6. March, Christoph & Ziegelmeyer, Anthony, 2020. "Altruistic observational learning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    7. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Frédéric Koessler & Juergen Bracht & Eyal Winter, 2010. "Fragility of information cascades: an experimental study using elicited beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(2), pages 121-145, June.
    8. Cao, Qian & Li, Jianbiao & Niu, Xiaofei, 2019. "The role of overconfidence in overweighting private information: Does gender matter?," EconStor Preprints 203448, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Jonathan E. Alevy & Michael S. Haigh & John List, 2006. "Information Cascades: Evidence from An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," NBER Working Papers 12767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Penczynski, Stefan P., 2017. "The nature of social learning: Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 148-165.
    11. Paul J. Healy & John Conlon & Yeochang Yoon, 2016. "Information Cascades with Informative Ratings: An Experimental Test," Working Papers 16-05, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.
    12. Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till & Hüning, Hendrik, 2013. "A comparison of endogenous and exogenous timing in a social learning experiment," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 167, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    13. Markus Schöbel & Jörg Rieskamp & Rafael Huber, 2016. "Social Influences in Sequential Decision Making," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(1), pages 1-23, January.
    14. Asanov, Igor, 2021. "Bandit cascade: A test of observational learning in the bandit problem," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 150-171.
    15. Roberta De Filippis & Antonio Guarino & Philippe Jehiel & Toru Kitagawa, 2016. "Updating ambiguous beliefs in a social learning experiment," CeMMAP working papers 18/16, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    16. Duffy, John & Hopkins, Ed & Kornienko, Tatiana & Ma, Mingye, 2019. "Information choice in a social learning experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 295-315.
    17. Diefeng Peng & Yulei Rao & Xianming Sun & Erte Xiao, 2019. "Optional Disclosure and Observational Learning," Monash Economics Working Papers 05-18, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    18. Bogaçhan Çelen & Sen Geng & Huihui Li, 2018. "Belief Error and Non-Bayesian Social Learning: An Experimental Evidence," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2018_022, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    19. Fahr, René & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2011. "Who follows the crowd—Groups or individuals?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 200-209.
    20. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2009. "Herd Behavior in Financial Markets: An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 206-233, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Information cascades; Herding; Group identity; Social cognition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jesaex:v:4:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s40881-018-0050-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.