Making the most of individual differences in joint decisions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahador Bahrami
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
Joint Decisions ◽  
Cultural Data ◽  
Better Than

Evidence for and against the idea that “two heads are better than one” is abundant. This chapter considers the contextual conditions and social norms that predict madness or wisdom of crowds to identify the adaptive value of collective decision-making beyond increased accuracy. Similarity of competence among members of a collective impacts collective accuracy, but interacting individuals often seem to operate under the assumption that they are equally competent even when direct evidence suggest the opposite and dyadic performance suffers. Cross-cultural data from Iran, China, and Denmark support this assumption of similarity (i.e., equality bias) as a sensible heuristic that works most of the time and simplifies social interaction. Crowds often trade off accuracy for other collective benefits such as diffusion of responsibility and reduction of regret. Consequently, two heads are sometimes better than one, but no-one holds the collective accountable, not even for the most disastrous of outcomes.

Democratic Reason

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The Many ◽  
Selection Of

Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases. Collective decision making, on the other hand, can be surprisingly accurate. This book demonstrates that the very factors behind the superiority of collective decision making add up to a strong case for democracy. The book shows that the processes and procedures of democratic decision making form a cognitive system that ensures that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Democracy as a form of government is therefore valuable not only because it is legitimate and just, but also because it is smart. The book considers how the argument plays out with respect to two main mechanisms of democratic politics: inclusive deliberation and majority rule. In deliberative settings, the truth-tracking properties of deliberation are enhanced more by inclusiveness than by individual competence. The book explores this idea in the contexts of representative democracy and the selection of representatives. It also discusses several models for the “wisdom of crowds” channeled by majority rule, examining the trade-offs between inclusiveness and individual competence in voting. When inclusive deliberation and majority rule are combined, they beat less inclusive methods, in which one person or a small group decides. The book thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good.

scholarly journals Wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making in a survival situation with complex information integration

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisuke Hamada ◽  
Masataka Nakayama ◽  
Jun Saiki
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Information Integration ◽  
Simulation Analysis ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Complex Information ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

Abstract Background The wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making are important tools for integrating information between individuals, which can exceed the capacity of individual judgments. They are based on different forms of information integration. The wisdom of crowds refers to the aggregation of many independent judgments without deliberation and consensus, while collective decision-making is aggregation with deliberation and consensus. Recent research has shown that collective decision-making outperforms the wisdom of crowds. Additionally, many studies have shown that metacognitive knowledge of subjective confidence is useful for improving aggregation performance. However, because most of these studies have employed relatively simple problems; for example, involving general knowledge and estimating values and quantities of objects, it remains unclear whether their findings can be generalized to real-life situations involving complex information integration. This study explores the performance and process of the wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making by applying the wisdom of crowds with weighted confidence to a survival situation task commonly used in studies of collective decision-making. Results The wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making outperformed individual judgment. However, collective decision-making did not outperform the wisdom of crowds. Contrary to previous studies, weighted confidence showed no advantage from comparison between confidence-weighted and non-weighted aggregations; a simulation analysis varying in group size and sensitivity of confidence weighting revealed interaction between group size and sensitivity of confidence weighting. This reveals that it is because of small group size and not the peculiarity of the survival task that results in no advantage of weighted confidence. Conclusions The study’s findings suggest that the wisdom of crowds could be applicable to complex problem-solving tasks, and interaction between group size and sensitivity of confidence weighting is important for confidence-weighted aggregation effects.

scholarly journals The Development of Conformity Among Chinese Children Aged 9–15 Years in a Public Choice Task

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 147470491774363
Author(s):  
Peng Zhang ◽  
Yibin Zhang ◽  
Zhaoran Mu ◽  
Xiangping Liu
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Social Recognition ◽  
Chinese Children ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
Conformity Behavior ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Group Acceptance

Both children and adults exhibit moderate conformity behaviors when facing group pressure. While some studies purport that children conform more with age, others have shown the opposite. The publicity of decision-making might be a major factor influencing the development of children’s conformity behavior. In this study, we recruited 295 Chinese children aged 9–15 years. We observed no significant correlation between children’s age and conformity behaviors when their answers were kept confidential. However, older children showed stronger conformity behaviors when their answers were made public. According to cultural evolutionary theory, with age, children find group acceptance and social recognition increasingly more important, which explains why older children are more likely to conform—namely, doing so has adaptive value. Further research should explore the cross-cultural coherence of this phenomenon and the genuine motivation behind children’s conformity behaviors. Meanwhile, designing a more reliable and valid experiment would also be a fruitful direction.

scholarly journals Benefits of collective intelligence: Swarm intelligent foraging, an ethnographic research

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-201
Author(s):  
Sivave Mashingaidze
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Swarm Intelligence ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Business Sustainability

Wisdom of crowds; bees, colonies of ants, schools of fish, flocks of birds, and fireflies flashing synchronously are all examples of highly coordinated behaviors that emerge from collective, decentralized intelligence. This article is an ethnographic study of swarm intelligence foraging of swarms and the benefits derived from collective decision making. The author used using secondary data analysis to look at the benefits of swarm intelligence in decision making to achieve intended goals. Concepts like combined decision making and consensus were discussed and four principles of swarm intelligence were also discussed viz; coordination, cooperation, deliberation and collaboration. The research found out that collective decision making in swarms is the touchstone of achieving their goals. The research further recommended corporate to adopt collective intelligence for business sustainability

scholarly journals The wisdom of stalemates: consensus and clustering as filtering mechanisms for improving collective accuracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1938) ◽  
pp. 20201802
Author(s):  
Claudia Winklmayr ◽  
Albert B. Kao ◽  
Joseph B. Bak-Coleman ◽  
Pawel Romanczuk
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

Groups of organisms, from bacteria to fish schools to human societies, depend on their ability to make accurate decisions in an uncertain world. Most models of collective decision-making assume that groups reach a consensus during a decision-making bout, often through simple majority rule. In many natural and sociological systems, however, groups may fail to reach consensus, resulting in stalemates. Here, we build on opinion dynamics and collective wisdom models to examine how stalemates may affect the wisdom of crowds. For simple environments, where individuals have access to independent sources of information, we find that stalemates improve collective accuracy by selectively filtering out incorrect decisions (an effect we call stalemate filtering). In complex environments, where individuals have access to both shared and independent information, this effect is even more pronounced, restoring the wisdom of crowds in regions of parameter space where large groups perform poorly when making decisions using majority rule. We identify network properties that tune the system between consensus and accuracy, providing mechanisms by which animals, or evolution, could dynamically adjust the collective decision-making process in response to the reward structure of the possible outcomes. Overall, these results highlight the adaptive potential of stalemate filtering for improving the decision-making abilities of group-living animals.

scholarly journals The wisdom of stalemates: consensus and clustering as filtering mechanisms for improving collective accuracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Winklmayr ◽  
Albert B. Kao ◽  
Joseph B. Bak-Coleman ◽  
Pawel Romanczuk
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

ABSTRACTGroups of organisms, from bacteria to fish schools to human societies, depend on their ability to make accurate decisions in an uncertain world. Most models of collective decision-making assume that groups reach a consensus during a decision-making bout, often through simple majority rule. In many natural and sociological systems, however, groups may fail to reach consensus, resulting in stalemates. Here, we build on opinion dynamics and collective wisdom models to examine how stalemates may affect the wisdom of crowds. For simple environments, where individuals have access to independent sources of information, we find that stalemates improve collective accuracy by selectively filtering out incorrect decisions. In complex environments, where individuals have access to both shared and independent information, this effect is even more pronounced, restoring the wisdom of crowds in regions of parameter space where large groups perform poorly when making decisions using majority rule. We identify network properties that tune the system between consensus and accuracy, providing mechanisms by which animals, or evolution, could dynamically adjust the collective decision-making process in response to the reward structure of the possible outcomes. Overall, these results highlight the adaptive potential of stalemale filtering for improving the decision-making abilities of group-living animals.

scholarly journals Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Austen-Smith ◽  
Jeffrey S. Banks
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Nash Equilibrium ◽  
Information Aggregation ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Condorcet Jury Theorem ◽  
Jury Theorem ◽  
Sincere Voting ◽  
Two Alternatives ◽  
Better Than

The Condorcet Jury Theorem states that majorities are more likely than any single individual to select the “better” of two alternatives when there exists uncertainty about which of the two alternatives is in fact preferred. Most extant proofs of this theorem implicitly make the behavioral assumption that individuals vote “sincerely” in the collective decision making, a seemingly innocuous assumption, given that individuals are taken to possess a common preference for selecting the better alternative. However, in the model analyzed here we find that sincere behavior by all individuals is not rational even when individuals have such a common preference. In particular, sincere voting does not constitute a Nash equilibrium. A satisfactory rational choice foundation for the claim that majorities invariably “do better” than individuals, therefore, has yet to be derived.

scholarly journals A comparison of individual and collective decision making for standard gamble and time trade-off

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-473
Author(s):  
Arthur E. Attema ◽  
Han Bleichrodt ◽  
Olivier l’Haridon ◽  
Stefan A. Lipman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Standard Gamble ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Decision Quality ◽  
Health State ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Decision Consistency ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
Life Years

AbstractQuality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) are typically derived from individual preferences over health episodes. This paper reports the first experimental investigation into the effects of collective decision making on health valuations, using both time trade-off (TTO) and standard gamble (SG) tasks. We investigated collective decision making in dyads, by means of a mixed-subjects design where we control for learning effects. Our data suggest that collective decision making has little effect on decision quality, as no effects were observed on decision consistency and monotonicity for both methods. Furthermore, QALY weights remained similar between individual and collective decisions, and the typical difference in elicited weights between TTO and SG was not affected. These findings suggest that consulting with others has little effect on health state valuation, although learning may have. Additionally, our findings add to the literature of the effect of collective decision making, suggesting that no such effect occurs for TTO and SG.

Applying Formal Social Epistemology to the Real World

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Martini
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

AbstractThe claim that diversity and independence have a net positive epistemic effect on the judgments of groups has been recently defended formally by Scott Page, among others, and popularized in Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds. In Meta-Induction and the Wisdom of Crowds Thorn and Schurz take issue with the claim that more diversity and independence in groups leads to better collective judgments. I argue that Thorn and Schurz's arguments are helpful in clarifying a number of over-generalizations about diversity and independence that are often circulated in the social epistemology literature. I also argue that the relevant formal arguments are easily misunderstood when presented 'in a vacuum', that is, without a context of application in mind. I provide a different approach to understanding formal results in social epistemology: With the help of concrete scenarios and the formal literature, I focus on a trade-off between independence and dependence in groups. I show that the approach works well also for another principle in social epistemology; namely, the principle that 'more heads are better than few'.

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