Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus – New York Times:
“If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an ‘informational cascade’ as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.”
Informational Cascades sounds as if they’re the corollary (almost wrote coronary :-) to the Wisdom of Crowds; actually, a reinforcement of the idea – independent actors need to pay independent attention to reach conclusions (or guesses).
This is where a sloppily implemented ‘WoC’ approach could cause real problems with a lack of privacy/containment of the guess creating an information cascade.
Actually, a lot of businesses suffer this problem right now – the ‘boss idea’ syndrome – ever wondered why some _really_ dumb ideas get done in organisations? It’s information cascade in effect.