Abstract
This study examines whether the way that a person makes inferences about unknown events is associated with his or her social relations, more precisely, those characterized by ego network density that reflects the structure of a person’s immediate social relation. From the analysis of individual predictions over the Go match between AlphaGo and Sedol Lee in March 2016 in Seoul, Korea, this study shows that the low-density group scored higher than the high-density group in the accuracy of the prediction over a future state of a social event, i.e., the outcome of the first game. We corroborated this finding with three replication tests that asked the participants to predict the following: film awards, President Park’s impeachment in Korea, and the counterfactual assessment of the US presidential election. Taken together, this study suggests that network density is negatively associated with vision advantage, i.e., the ability to discover and forecast an unknown aspect of a social event.
Highlights
IntroductionPresidential candidates seek to identify what the majority of the voters want the most; marketing managers try to predict consumers’ preference on a newly launched product
Before examining the role of a person’s social relations in making inference about uncertain events, we first identified a general pattern, if any, in each person’s inference about the outcome of the Go-match between AlphaGo and Sedol Lee. This observed pattern would be used as a baseline model for us to examine the role of social relations in making inferences
This study examines whether the way that a person makes inferences about unknown events is associated with his or her social relations, more precisely, those characterized by ego network
Summary
Presidential candidates seek to identify what the majority of the voters want the most; marketing managers try to predict consumers’ preference on a newly launched product. It is an essential aspect of human sociality to make inferences about unknown states of a social phenomenon. A social event takes different states, depending on the efforts and capabilities of individuals that are associated with the event. Because the efforts and capabilities of the others are not under the direct control of the observer, the evolution of a social event is typically unknown to the observer. The popularity of a new song, the capability of a new hire, and the result of the upcoming election are indeterminate, unknown states of musical tastes, labor productivity, and political orientations, respectively
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