Using response times to infer personal information about others: an application to information cascades

Published online: September 28, 2021 at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.3994

Explanation

An assumption in social learning environments is that agents learn from others through the consequences of their choices.

In many settings, it was assumed that agents infer information from other response times (RTs), which may improve efficiency.

To test this, we conducted a standard information cascade experiment and found that RTs contain information that is not revealed by the choice outcome alone.

When RTs are observable, participants are more likely to extract this personal information and escape the false cascade.

Our results suggest that in environments where RTs are publicly available, the information structure may be richer than previously thought.