Gemeinsam sind wir dümmer thematisiert die Normierung von Meinungen in Communities. Das Individuum bildet sich keine eigene Meinung und handelt in gleicher Weise wie der Mainstream. Bei Crowdinvesting ist das ein Mangel, weil die Schwarmintelligenz ungenutzt bleibt.
Schwarmdummheit kann aber durchaus nützlich sein, beispielsweise wenn es darum geht, Studierende vom übermäßigen Trinken abzuhalten. Dieser Ansatz der Schwarmweisheit war die einzige Methode, die eine positive Wirkung auf das gesundheitsschädliche Verhalten der Hochschul - Community hatte:
Social norming is an obvious strategy for reducing
drug and alcohol use, but it can be used to curb other behaviors
too. Haines now runs a consulting firm that helps schools and
communities use social norms to reduce alcohol and tobacco use. Perkins and
others have carried out successful
applications of social norming against bullying – people are less likely to
bully and less likely to be passive bystanders when they know that most
students disapprove of the practice and applaud intervention. Berkowitz
works with universities, the military, and the United Nations to use social
norming to reduce sexual violence and promote intervention by bystanders.
Cialdini has run successful experiments using social
norming to reduce littering, increase recycling and protect wood from theft at
the Petrified Forest National Park (telling people “please don’t remove
the wood” and showing a lone thief inside a red circle and slash worked five times better than
telling people that many past visitors have removed wood, with a picture of
three thieves). The strategy has even helped encourage hotel guests to reuse
their hotel towels. It
turns out that “most guests re-use their towels” is 26 percent more effective
than “please protect the environment by reusing your towels.”
Farther afield: Britain changed the dunning
letters it sent to tax scofflaws to “9 out of 10 people in Britain pay their
tax on time,” and collected £5.6 billion (about $8.5 billion) more in overdue
revenue in 2009-10 than it had the year before. (The details are in
a Harvard Business Review story called “98 Percent of HBR Readers Love This
Article.”)
