Social influence and informational independence.

Abstract

We frequently use social information when making decisions.For instance, other people may know more about a problemthan we do, so we might update our initial beliefs in light oftheir opinions. The epistemic value of these social cues de-pends in part on their informational independence. Peopleshould thus be sensitive to nonindependence in their weightingof social information. However, the current literature yieldsconflicting results. In one recent study, participants valued so-cial information less when it was nonindependent; in another,participants were insensitive to nonindependence. We identifypossible causes of this inconsistency, and present an experi-mental paradigm that aims to fill these gaps. Then, in a study(N=200) with pre-registered hypotheses and analyses, we findthat participants were not sensitive to cue dependence. Wehighlight the relevance of this finding for the modern mediacontext, where nonindependence of both traditional and socialmedia sources can lead to the spread of bias or false belief.

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