Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market.

by: MJ Salganik, PS Dodds, DJ Watts

Science, Vol. 311, No. 5762. (10 February 2006), pp. 854-856.

View FullText article

DOI, HighWire, Pubmed, Hubmed

Reviews [Write a review of this article]

There are no reviews of this article

Find related articles from these CiteULike users

MehdiMoussaid, kentsis, ChaTo, junwang4, dartar, voiklis, amac, Sociology (group), Soslab (group), CooperationStudies (group), ColDyn (group), Lemyyri, anton-tayanovskyy, pbrown1655, gdean338, krisl

Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

collective-attention, collective-behavior, complex, conformity, consumers, controlled-experiment, cultural-market, _d_, decision_making, empirical, experiment, herding, human, imitation, inequality, interaction, intrinsic-fitness, link-prediction, market, media, memetics, mesophysics, music, no-tag, ranking, rating, social, social_cognition, socially-mediated-epistemology, sociology, stratification, taste_objectivism, time, trendsetting, watts

Abstract

Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.

@article{citeulike:520717, abstract = {Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.}, address = {Department of Sociology, 413 Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA. mjs2105@columbia.edu}, author = {Salganik, M. J. and Dodds, P. S. and Watts, D. J. }, citeulike-article-id = {520717}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1121066}, issn = {1095-9203}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {conformity, imitation, media, stratification, trendsetting}, month = {February}, number = {5762}, pages = {854--856}, posted-at = {2008-02-02 11:21:10}, priority = {0}, title = {Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1121066}, volume = {311}, year = {2006} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:520717 L3 - citeulike-article-id:520717 TI - Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market. JF - Science VL - 311 IS - 5762 SP - 854 EP - 856 AD - Department of Sociology, 413 Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA. mjs2105@columbia.edu SN - 1095-9203 N2 - Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible. KW - conformity KW - imitation KW - media KW - stratification KW - trendsetting AU - Salganik, MJ AU - Dodds, PS AU - Watts, DJ PY - 2006/02/10/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1121066 ER -

RIS BibTeX