Bandwagon Effect

Abstract

The term “bandwagon effect” denotes a phenomenon of public opinion impinging upon itself. Conceptually, it is somewhat ambiguous, so that definitions in the literature vary. Often, it is defined as a tendency of people to affiliate with the winning side of a competition. More generally, it can be defined as an inclination of persons to join in their preferences or behaviors what they perceive to be existing or emerging majorities or dominant positions in society. This implies that success breeds further success, and alternatives that appear to enjoy a broad popular backing are likely to gain even stronger support. Sometimes, it is correspondingly claimed that minorities or losing alternatives, because of their weakness, suffer further losses of support. In any case, the notion of bandwagon effects implies the idea that perceived public opinion exhibits the quality of a self-fulfilling prophecy. For public opinion perceptions, information conveyed by the mass media is crucial. Reporting on public opinion polls is the most important, but not the only, source of such impressions. The notion of the bandwagon effect started its scientific life as a rather vague idea without a well-developed theoretical basis. Accordingly, it lacked conceptual precision and proved empirically elusive. But a number of carefully designed studies have succeeded in demonstrating that bandwagon effects do exist. The theoretical background of bandwagon effects has only recently come to be better understood. Whether they emerge and how large they are is strongly contingent on personal and situational circumstances as well as attributes of the triggering messages. Bandwagon effects have been most intensely explored in politics. Some studies have also investigated their functioning in other areas of life, such as consumer behavior. The bandwagon effect is one of several hypothesized manifestations of “impersonal influence”—effects on individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors that derive from these persons’ impressions about the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors of collectives of anonymous others outside their personal contact sphere. Other examples of impersonal influence are the “underdog effect,” which complements the bandwagon effect by stating a positive impact of perceptions of failure or losing, and—with specific reference to elections—the notion of “strategic” voting, which expects voters to support a less attractive alternative at an election if they can thereby avoid “wasting” their vote.