The Hazards and Benefits of Condescension in Social Learning

TL;DR

This paper explores how varying levels of condescension among agents in social learning affect outcomes, revealing that mild condescension can improve results, while excessive condescension or anti-condescension worsen them.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing the impact of condescension in social learning, showing that mild condescension optimizes outcomes in a misspecified setting.

Findings

Mild condescension improves social learning outcomes.

Excessive condescension worsens results.

Anti-condescension also leads to poorer outcomes.

Abstract

In a misspecified social learning setting, agents are condescending if they perceive their peers as having private information that is of lower quality than it is in reality. Applying this to a standard sequential model, we show that outcomes improve when agents are mildly condescending. In contrast, too much condescension leads to worse outcomes, as does anti-condescension.