Social Influence and Conflict Research Paper

Social Influence Can Undermine the Wisdom of Crowd Effect" by Lorenz and colleagues (2010) demonstrates how social context can really have a strong influence on the way in which social groups can sway the way in which conflict is perceived. This article demonstrates how even the mildest social influence can undermine the wisdom of a crowd in simple estimation activities (Lorenz et al., 2010). In this experiment, participants were given the option of reconsidering their responses to certain factual questions after they were given the general consensus of the responses of their peers (Lorenz et al., 2010). The researchers would then compare the convergence of estimates of each subject with the improvements in overall accuracy over a period of time in comparison with control conditions where no other info was provided (Lorenz et al., 2010). Ultimately, what the researchers found was that "Although groups are initially 'wise,' knowledge about estimates of others narrow the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines the wisdom of crowd effect in three different ways. The 'social influence effect' diminishes the diversity of the crowd without improvements of its collective error. The 'range reduction effect' moves the position of the truth to peripheral regions of the range of estimates so that the crowd becomes less reliable in providing expertise for external observers" (Lorenz et al., 2010). Likewise, the confidence effect is something which can increase the level of perceived confidence of a particular individual or a group after there's a perceived convergence of estimates even though there's an absence of bettered accuracy (Lorenz et al., 2010).

Another benefit of this research is that it can extend from misled academics and other elites to victims and players within the financial crisis of the last few years (Lorenz et al., 2010). Within this research it was found that social influence has a truly massive impact on how conflict is perceived and that generally conflict will be perceived as the majority views it. Just as social influence can have an impact on how individuals view the likelihood or perceived benefit of an event, this same influence can fundamentally color the viewpoint through which they perceive conflict. Individuals can see the conflict as positive or negative or ultimately beneficial or destructive, depending on the general consensus of the majority.

From a wildly different perspective, the research article, "Complexities of conflict: the importance of considering social factors for effectively resolving human -- wildlife conflict" by Dickman (2010), looks at how the social impacts of conflict can either exacerbate or mollify the issue of human-wildlife conflict. This research also examines the ways…