People copy models whose outcomes look successful, without being able to identify which of the model's behaviours produced the outcome.
Copying the successful is cheap and often right, and it transmits everything the successful person does, including the irrelevant. The learner has one outcome and many candidate causes, and no way to separate them, which is why imitation of winners reliably carries superstition along with technique.
In practice
- A firm copies the org chart of the market leader and acquires its meeting culture, its tooling and its luck in equal measure.
- A trader who won on a hunch repeats the ritual that preceded it, along with the analysis.
- Standing
- Distinct from prestige bias, which keys on others' deference rather than on observed results.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change