Project title: Manufacturing Majorities: The Influence of False Consensus and Descriptive Norms on Partisan Opinion Cascades
Project description: This project examines how false consensus effects and descriptive norms drive partisan opinion cascades, contributing to the formation of perceived political majorities that may not reflect actual belief distributions. Building on theories of social influence and opinion cascade dynamics, I aim to apply a modified version of the Music Lab methodology -- as developed by Salganik, Dodds, and Watts and later tested in the context of partisanship by Macy, Deri, Ruch, and Tong -- to simulate partisan information environments where participants are exposed to artificially manipulated indicators of opinion popularity. Through controlled and social influence experimental conditions, I aim to test how perceived consensus and social norms affect participants' willingness to publicly conform to partisan viewpoints. These results have the potential to highlight the susceptibility of political discourse to cascades driven not by genuine persuasion, but by perceived norms and social conformity pressures. This work contributes to a growing body of research on the fragility of opinion formation in networked societies and the mechanisms through which political polarization is socially manufactured.
Most important achievement: Pushing myself to grow in supportive and intellectually-stimulating communities across Cornell, especially on Cornell's parliamentary debate team where I found my second home.
Reflections on the College Scholar Program: Through College Scholar, I've met and bonded with a cohort of students whose different paths would have never crossed my own without this program. Hearing each one's excitement in sharing their ideas has been truly inspiring for my own research, and I have grown immensely as a learner and listener because of it.