I just read about some recent research that shows that people are much more influenced by other people’s positive than negative opinion. This is called positive herding. Interestingly, people are much more skeptical about other people’s negative opinion than positive one. Because of this inherent bias, negative herding is thus hardly a problem. In stockmarkets, positive herding can also be inflationary. It can lead to bubbles, as was the case with the housing bubble leading to the financial crisis a bit more than five years ago. But the bias of positive opinion is left at that. The article I read does not even have a memorable title, such as “Beware of Positive Opinion,” for example. Alas, a title like that would be nothing if not deflationary!