The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads
and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others. In other words,
the bandwagon effect is characterized by the probability of individual adoption increasing
with respect to the proportion who have already done so. As more people come to believe in
something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.
The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly
prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations
have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments. For example,
social pressure has been used to explain Asch's conformity experiments, and information has
been used to explain Sherif's autokinetic experiment.
Concept In layman’s terms the bandwagon effect refers
to people doing certain things because other people are doing them, regardless of their
own beliefs, which they may ignore or override. The perceived "popularity" of an object or
person may have an effect on how it is viewed on a whole. For instance, once a product becomes
popular, more people tend to "get on the bandwagon" and buy it, too. The bandwagon effect explains
why there are fashion trends. When individuals make rational choices based
on the information they receive from others, economists have proposed that information
cascades can quickly form in which people decide to ignore their personal information
signals and follow the behavior of others. Cascades explain why behavior is fragile—people
understand that they are based on very limited information. As a result, fads form easily
but are also easily dislodged. Such informational effects have been used to explain political
bandwagons. Origin
Literally, a bandwagon is a wagon which carries the band in a parade, circus or other entertainment.
The phrase "jump on the bandwagon" first appeared in American politics in 1848 when Dan Rice,
a famous and popular circus clown of the time, used his bandwagon and its music to gain attention
for his political campaign appearances. As his campaign became more successful, other
politicians strove for a seat on the bandwagon, hoping to be associated with his success.
Later, during the time of William Jennings Bryan's 1900 presidential campaign, bandwagons
had become standard in campaigns, and "jump on the bandwagon" was used as a derogatory
term, implying that people were associating themselves with the success without considering
what they associated themselves with. Use in politics
The bandwagon effect occurs in voting: some people vote for those candidates or parties
who are likely to succeed, hoping to be on the "winner's side" in the end. The bandwagon
effect has been applied to situations involving majority opinion, such as political outcomes,
where people alter their opinions to the majority view. Such a shift in opinion can occur because
individuals draw inferences from the decisions of others, as in an informational cascade.
Because of time zones, election results are broadcast in the eastern parts of the United
States while polls are still open in the west. This difference has led to research on how
the behavior of voters in western United States are influenced by news about the decisions
of voters in other time zones. In 1980, NBC News declared Ronald Reagan to be the winner
of the presidential race on the basis of the exit polls several hours before the voting
booths closed in the west. It is also said to be important in the American
Presidential Primary elections. States all vote at different times, spread over some
months, rather than all on one day. Some states have special precedence to go early while
others have to wait until a certain date. This is often said to give undue influence
to these states, a win in these early states is said to give a candidate the "Big Mo" and
has propelled many candidates to win the nomination. Because of this, other states often try front
loading to make their say as influential as they can. In the 2008 presidential primaries
two states had all or some of their delegates banned from the convention by the central
party organizations for voting too early. Several studies have tested this theory of
the bandwagon effect in political decision making. In the 1994 study of Robert K. Goidel
and Todd G. Shields in The Journal of Politics, 180 students at the University of Kentucky
were randomly assigned to nine groups and were asked questions about the same set of
election scenarios. About 70% of subjects received information about the expected winner.
Independents, which are those who do not vote based on the endorsement of any party and
are ultimately neutral, were influenced strongly in favor of the person expected to win. Expectations
played a significant role throughout the study. It was found that independents are twice as
likely to vote for the Republican candidate when the Republican is expected to win. From
the results, it was also found that when the Democrat was expected to win, independent
Republicans and weak Republicans were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate.
A study by Albert Mehrabian, reported in The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, tested
the relative importance of the bandwagon effect versus the underdog effect. Bogus poll results
presented to voters prior to the 1996 Republican primary clearly showed the bandwagon effect
to predominate on balance. Indeed, approximately 6% of the variance in the vote was explained
in terms of the bogus polls, showing that poll results can significantly influence election
results in closely contested elections. In particular, assuming that one candidate "is
an initial favorite by a slim margin, reports of polls showing that candidate as the leader
in the race will increase his or her favorable margin". Thus, as poll results are repeatedly
reported, the bandwagon effect will tend to snowball and become a powerful aid to leading
candidates. During the 1992 U.S. presidential election,
Vicki G. Morwitz and Carol Pluzinski conducted a study, which was published in The Journal
of Consumer Research. At a large northeastern university, some of 214 volunteer business
students were given the results of student and national polls indicating that Bill Clinton
was in the lead. Others were not exposed to the results of the polls. Several students
who had intended to vote for Bush changed their minds after seeing the poll results.
Additionally, British polls have shown an increase to public exposure. Sixty-eight percent
of voters had heard of the general election campaign results of the opinion poll in 1979.
In 1987, this number of voters aware of the results increased to 74%. According to British
studies, there is a consistent pattern of apparent bandwagon effects for the leading
party. Use in microeconomics
In microeconomics, bandwagon effect describes interactions of demand and preference. The
bandwagon effect arises when people's preference for a commodity increases as the number of
people buying it increases. This interaction potentially disturbs the normal results of
the theory of supply and demand, which assumes that consumers make buying decisions solely
based on price and their own personal preference. Gary Becker has even argued that the bandwagon
effect could be so strong as to make the demand curve slope upward.
See also
References
Further reading Goidel, Robert K.; Shields, Todd G.. "The
Vanishing Marginals, the Bandwagon, and the Mass Media". The Journal of Politics 56: 802–810.
doi:10.2307/2132194. McAllister, Ian; Studlar, Donley T.. "Bandwagon,
Underdog, or Projection? Opinion Polls and Electoral Choice in Britain, 1979-1987". The
Journal of Politics 53: 720–740. doi:10.2307/2131577. Mehrabian, Albert. "Effects of Poll Reports
on Voter Preferences". Journal of Applied Social Psychology 28: 2119–2130. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01363.x.
Morwitz, Vicki G.; Pluzinski, Carol. "Do Polls Reflect Opinions or Do Opinions Reflect Polls?".
Journal of Consumer Research 23: 53–65. doi:10.1086/209466. JSTOR 2489665.
External links Definition at Investopedia