We propose a social learning model where agents choose who to communicate with based on the trade-off between collecting information and influencing others' actions. Like-minded people reveal more truthful information, but talking to someone different makes an agent more likely to influence another person's action, because like-minded people will take similar actions anyway. In our model agents start with heterogeneous priors about an unknown state of the world. First agents form coalitions of communication partners. Then everyone observes a private i.i.d. signal and sends a message to her partner. Finally everyone takes an action based on her prior, her private signal, and her partner's message. Our main finding is that when signals and actions are binary, agents form assortative coalitions, even though assortative coalitions are inefficient for social welfare.

我们提出了一种社会学习模型，代理商可以根据收集信息与影响他人行为之间的权衡来选择与谁交流。志趣相投的人会透露更多真实的信息，但与不同的人交谈会使代理人更可能影响他人的行为，因为志趣相投的人无论如何都会采取类似的行动。在我们的模型中，代理从关于世界未知状态的异类先验开始。一级代理人组成了通讯伙伴联盟。然后，每个人都观察到一个私人iid信号，并向其伴侣发送一条消息。最终，每个人​​都根据她的先前，她的私人信号以及她的伴侣的信息采取行动。我们的主要发现是，当信号和动作是二进制的时，主体​​形成了分类联盟，