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Practice Reading: Fill in the Blanks (Dropdown) ID: #51271 Social Influence
Instructions
If  you  want  to  guess  how  many  jelly  beans  are  in  a  jar,  you  should  ask  your  friends.  Then  average  their  answers.  Because  a  group  guess  is  often  more  accurate  than  that  of  any  one  individual.  Just  don't  let  them  peek  at  each  other's  responses.  Because  a  new  study  shows  that  social  influence  can  sway  people's    and  render  the  crowd  .  The  work  appears  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences  .  Crowd  wisdom  is  actually  a  statistical  phenomenon.  Gather  enough  estimates  and  the  wild  guesses  cancel  each  other  out,  bringing  you  closer  to  the  answer.  But  psychology  and  statistics  don'  .  And  knowing  what  your  peers  think  doesn't  make  you  any  smarter.  European  scientists  asked  volunteers  to  estimate  statistics  like  the  population  density  of  Switzerland.  Each  person  got  five  guesses.  Some  were  shown  their  peers'  answers  and  others  weren't.  Turns  out  that  seeing  others'  estimates  led  to  a  lot  of  second  guessing,  which    the  range  of  the  group's  responses  and  pointed  them  in  the  wrong  .  Even  ,  knowing  that  others  said  the  same  thing  made  everyone  more  confident  they  were  right.  So  there  is  wisdom  in  numbersas  long  as  those  numbers  keep  quiet  `til  they're  counted.

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