Fig. 5.

Dynamic features of judgment propagation in study 2. (A) The intensity and range of social contagion after 15 rounds, assuming different propagation mechanisms (model previously calibrated in study 1): full and immediate adoption of the partner’s judgment (in black), distortion of information only (in blue), and distortion of information and error overweighting (in red). Circles correspond to experimental data. (B) Intensity and range of social contagion over 100 rounds of interactions as predicted by the model. The range of social contagion initially increased with time but eventually plateaued at a social distance of four. (C) The time delay required for social influence to travel through the chain increased exponentially with social distance. The dots indicate the model predictions (for 1,000 simulation runs), and the lines show the best exponential fit. For distances larger than four persons, the time delay exceeded 100 rounds before a weak influence (s = 0.2, in blue) appeared. Strong influence (s = 0.8, in red) could not propagate beyond a social distance of three persons because information distortion rendered the (indirect) adoption of the originator’s judgment increasingly impossible. The Inset shows the same figure with a logarithmic transformation along the y axis, confirming the exponential growth of the time delay.