Bandwagon effect

The bandwagon effect, also called bandwagon effect refers, in the theory of action, the effect which a perceived success on the willingness to join the expected successful practices. For example, voters would like to be on the winning side, that they rather choose the candidates from whom they expect that they will be victorious.

This action- determining effect is found not only in the field of electoral and media impact, but also in the field of consumer research. Formal representations were introduced in the microeconomics and the game theory.

Conceptual history

Bandwagon effect is made ​​famous by "The People's Choice ", a groundbreaking panel study of Paul F. Lazarsfeld et al. presidential election campaign in 1940 in Erie County, Ohio.

He was described in Germany in 1932 from the then SPD Reichstag deputies Carlo Mierendorff as " political herd instinct " and 1940 lecture by Elisabeth Noelle - Neumann in her dissertation on political mass surveys in the United States as a " bandwagon pulse ". This effect of controlling human behavior shows the influence of electoral behavior by the publication of election forecasts ( Spiral of Silence ).

Retrieved from " fellow traveler " effect is also spoken in the political sociology when people avoid because of personal benefits or drawbacks of a party or social movement to connect ( for example, after 1933, the NSDAP). Add the Microeconomics also from fellow traveler's effect is spoken (even imitation effect). This effect describes the increase in demand for a consumer due to the fact that other users ( members of a reference group ) this good (often there are fashion items) bought. The demand is then increased to a greater extent, than would be the case in the normal course of the demand.

Lazarsfeld's The People 's Choice

The Lazarsfeldsche Bandwagon effect describes the interaction between the expectations of a person who is going to win an election ( anticipation of the winner ) with their voting intention ( vote intention ) and their political interestedness. It finds a high correlation between voting intention and expectation winner. Each party supporters expected that his candidate wins; but who is uninterested, also no fixed opinion, who will win because forms. The winners expectancy depends more direct social contacts from than the voting intention. The fact that a bandwagon effect actually works, it can be developed that undecided voters decide later to select those candidates, of whom they have previously expected to win. The psychological interplay of expectation and voting intent is psychologically quite a complex operation. Probably also unclear intentions are first of all formulated as expectations about the winners.

Bandwagon effect by notice forecast

Be made available in the course of an election first forecasts of the public voting behavior, start some voters not to give their electorate vote to 's preferred candidate, but the supposed winner of this election, and still undecided voters follow the crowd and also give the predicted winners their voice.

Lazarsfeld bandwagon effect is founded by Mark Granovetter with a rational benefit analysis. The individuals assess the negative consequences of a decision and their own safety or their assertiveness and bring them depending on the number of those who make the same decision. The diversity of individual personality becomes clear. For every man there is a specific threshold value of the participation of others, from which he gives to his preferences and keep the situation safe enough to be able to also choose to can. Instead of a rational benefit analysis can be set at this point, other individual considerations, such as moral, or social aspects of character. What is important is the assumption that a threshold exists, such as a percentage can be specified, which is the individual present. It may be 0% or 100%, but also a value therebetween is also conceivable. If the threshold of a player at 0 %, it can be said that its decision covers completely with his preferences and always makes use of this decision, regardless of how other players act. While a threshold of 100 %, suggesting that the individual decides only to a decision as soon as all the other players choose exactly this.

Is the threshold between these two values ​​, so the individual considerations come into play. In dynamic games this shift in the balance of economists and statisticians with the help of newer mathematical methods such as the theory of stochastic approximation is occupied.

Empirical studies of the idler effect make to use the voting Western phenomenon.