Script from: The marginal majority effect: when social influence produces lock-in

People are influenced by the choices of others, a phenomenon observed
across contexts in the social and behavioral sciences. Social influence
can lock in an initial popularity advantage of an option over a higher
quality alternative. Yet, several experiments designed to enable social
influence have found that social systems self-correct rather than lock in.
Here, we identify a behavioral phenomenon that makes inferior lock-in
possible, which we call the 'marginal majority effect': A
discontinuous increase in the choice probability of an option as its
popularity exceeds that of a competing option. We demonstrate the
existence of a marginal majority effect in several recent experiments and
show that lock-in always occurs when the effect is large enough to offset
the quality effect on choice, but rarely otherwise. Our results reconcile
conflicting past empirical evidence and connect a behavioral phenomenon to
the possibility of social lock-in.