Université de Fribourg

Opinion dynamics and wisdom under conformity

Buechel, Berno ; Hellmann, Tim ; Kloessner, Stefan

In: Journal of economic dynamics and control, 2015, vol. 52, p. 240-257

We study a dynamic model of opinion formation in social networks. In our model, boundedly rational agents update opinions by averaging over their neighbors’ expressed opinions, but may misrepresent their own opinion by conforming or counter-conforming with their neighbors. We show that an agent׳s social influence on the long-run group opinion is increasing in network centrality and...

Université de Fribourg

The strength of weak leaders : an experiment on social influence and social learning in teams

Buechel, Berno ; Kloessner, Stefan ; Lochmueller, Martin ; Rauhut, Heiko

In: Experimental economics, 2019, p. 1-35

We investigate how the selection process of a leader affects team performance with respect to social learning. We use a laboratory experiment in which an incentivized guessing task is repeated in a star network with the leader at the center. Leader selection is either based on competence, on self-confidence, or made at random. In our setting, teams with random leaders do not underperform....