I think there is an important difference between situations where the truth is objective (and can and will be measured accurately and fairly when the payoff is

I think there is an important difference between situations where the truth is objective (and can and will be measured accurately and fairly when the payoff is determined) and situations where the truth is "made", for lack of a better word. The best example, of course, is financial markets vs weight of an ox. In financial markets, we are often dealing with a "Keynesian beauty contest" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest). I would doubt that those whose beliefs are insensitive to data concerning the crowd would do well, at least in the short to medium term. Whereas in weighing an ox at a fair, that truth is absolutely orthogonal to what the crowd thinks (granted, the odds of a bet structure may vary, but the study didn't get into such things AFAIK). There would be no benefit for an informed observer to dilute his prior with the crowd's ideas, so having a concentrated prior may signal experience, inside knowledge, etc. much more clearly than in the above situation.