Social influence may lead individuals to choose what is popular over what is best. Whenever this happens, it further increases the popularity advantage of the inferior choice, compelling subsequent decision makers to follow suit. The author argues that despite this positive feedback effect, discordances between popularity and quality will usually self-correct. Reanalyzing past experimental studies in which social information initially heavily favored inferior options, the author shows that in each experiment superior alternatives gained in popularity. This article also reports on a new experiment in which a larger number of subject choices allowed trials to be run to convergence and shows that in each trial the superior alternative eventually achieved popular dominance. To explain the persistent dominance of bestsellers, celebrities, and memes of seemingly questionable quality in everyday life in terms of social influence processes, one must identify conditions that render positive feedback so strong that self-correcting dynamics are prevented.

中文翻译：

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社会影响过程中的自我纠正动态

社会影响可能会导致个人选择流行的而不是最好的。每当这种情况发生时，就会进一步增加劣质选择的人气优势，迫使后续决策者效仿。作者认为，尽管有这种积极的反馈效应，但受欢迎程度和质量之间的不一致通常会自我纠正。重新分析过去的实验研究，在这些研究中，社会信息最初非常偏爱劣质选项，作者表明，在每个实验中，优越的选择都越来越受欢迎。本文还报告了一项新实验，在该实验中，更多的主题选择允许试验进行收敛，并表明在每次试验中，优越的替代方案最终获得了普遍的支配地位。为了解释畅销书、名人的持续主导地位，