scholarly journals Decision accuracy in complex environments is often maximized by small group sizes

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1784) ◽  
pp. 20133305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert B. Kao ◽  
Iain D. Couzin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Temporal Correlation ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Decision Accuracy ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

Individuals in groups, whether composed of humans or other animal species, often make important decisions collectively, including avoiding predators, selecting a direction in which to migrate and electing political leaders. Theoretical and empirical work suggests that collective decisions can be more accurate than individual decisions, a phenomenon known as the ‘wisdom of crowds’. In these previous studies, it has been assumed that individuals make independent estimates based on a single environmental cue. In the real world, however, most cues exhibit some spatial and temporal correlation, and consequently, the sensory information that near neighbours detect will also be, to some degree, correlated. Furthermore, it may be rare for an environment to contain only a single informative cue, with multiple cues being the norm. We demonstrate, using two simple models, that taking this natural complexity into account considerably alters the relationship between group size and decision-making accuracy. In only a minority of environments do we observe the typical wisdom of crowds phenomenon (whereby collective accuracy increases monotonically with group size). When the wisdom of crowds is not observed, we find that a finite, and often small, group size maximizes decision accuracy. We reveal that, counterintuitively, it is the noise inherent in these small groups that enhances their accuracy, allowing individuals in such groups to avoid the detrimental effects of correlated information while exploiting the benefits of collective decision-making. Our results demonstrate that the conventional view of the wisdom of crowds may not be informative in complex and realistic environments, and that being in small groups can maximize decision accuracy across many contexts.

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 Decision-Making in a Real-Time Business Simulation Game: Cultural and Demographic Aspects in Small Group Dynamics

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 779-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Bragge ◽  
Henrik Kallio ◽  
Tomi Seppälä ◽  
Timo Lainema ◽  
Pekka Malo
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Group Performance ◽  
Dynamic Decision Making ◽  
Simulation Game ◽  
Business Simulation

Simulated virtual realities offer a promising but currently underutilized source of data in studying cultural and demographic aspects of dynamic decision-making (DDM) in small groups. This study focuses on one simulated reality, a clock-driven business simulation game, which is used to teach operations management. The purpose of our study is to analyze the characteristics of the decision-making groups, such as cultural orientation, education, gender and group size, and their relationship to group performance in a real-time processed simulation game. Our study examines decision-making in small groups of two or three employees from a global manufacturing and service operations company. We aim at shedding new light on how such groups with diverse background profiles perform as decision-making units. Our results reveal that the profile of the decision-making group influences the outcome of decision-making, the final business result of the simulation game. In particular, the cultural and gender diversity, as well as group size seem to have intertwined effects on team performance.

Small Group Effects on Foreign Policy Decision Making

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean A. Garrison
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
High Level

The core decision-making literature argues that leaders and their advisors operate within a political and social context that determines when and how they matter to foreign policy decision making. Small groups and powerful leaders become important when they have an active interest in and involvement with the issue under discussion; when the problem is perceived to be a crisis and important to the future of the regime; in novel situations requiring more than simple application of existing standard operating procedures; and when high-level diplomacy is involved. Irving Janis’s groupthink and Graham Allison’s bureaucratic politics serve as the starting point in the study of small groups and foreign policy decision making. There are three distinct structural arrangements of decision groups: formalistic/hierarchical, competitive, and collegial advisory structures, which vary based on their centralization and how open they are to the input of various members of the decision group. Considering the leader, group members, and influence patterns, it is possible to see that decision making within a group rests on the symbiotic relationship between the leader and members of the group or among group members themselves. Indeed, the interaction among group members creates particular patterns of behavior that affect how the group functions and how the policy process will evolve and likely influence policy outcomes. Ultimately, small group decision making must overcome the consistent challenge to differentiate its role in foreign policy analysis from other decision units and expand further beyond the American context.

scholarly journals EPISTEMIC DEMOCRACY WITH DEFENSIBLE PREMISES

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Dietrich ◽  
Kai Spiekermann
Keyword(s):  
Small Groups ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
Epistemic Democracy ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Condorcet Jury Theorem ◽  
Jury Theorem ◽  
Misleading Conclusion ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the ‘wisdom of crowds’. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises – voter independence – is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem's misleading conclusion that ‘large crowds are infallible’. We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, ‘large crowds are fallible but better than small groups’. This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha's (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable (‘indistinguishable’) voters based on de Finetti's Theorem. We also prove a more general and simpler such jury theorem.

Leadership and the wisdom of crowds: how to tap into the collective intelligence of an organization

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Matzler ◽  
Andreas Strobl ◽  
Franz Bailom
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Leadership Styles ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Cognitive Diversity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

Purpose – Under certain conditions, a mass of people can be smarter than the best expert – even if the expert is part of the group. In this paper we show how leaders can improve decision making by tapping into the collective intelligence of their organization. Design/methodology/approach – Based on James Surowiecki’s four conditions of collective intelligence (cognitive diversity, independence, utilization of decentralized knowledge, and effective aggregation of dispersed knowledge), we discuss how leaders can tap into the wisdom of the crowd of their organizations. Findings – We show how leaders can increase cognitive diversity in decision making, access decentralized knowledge in their organizations, encourage individuals to contribute their knowledge without interference from peer pressure, conformity or influence from superiors, and how knowledge can effectively be aggregated to make wiser decisions. Originality/value – While various tools exist to reap the collective intelligence of a group, we argue that leaders also must change their attitudes and leadership styles. Using evidence from various studies and several examples we show what leaders can do to make smarter decisions.

scholarly journals Democracy under uncertainty: The wisdom of crowds and the free-rider problem in group decision making.

2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatsuya Kameda ◽  
Takafumi Tsukasaki ◽  
Reid Hastie ◽  
Nathan Berg
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Free Rider Problem ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

scholarly journals The wisdom of crowds for visual search

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (21) ◽  
pp. E4306-E4315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mordechai Z. Juni ◽  
Miguel P. Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Signal Detection ◽  
Signal Detection Theory ◽  
Detection Theory ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Weighted Averaging ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
The Wisdom Of Crowds

Decision-making accuracy typically increases through collective integration of people’s judgments into group decisions, a phenomenon known as the wisdom of crowds. For simple perceptual laboratory tasks, classic signal detection theory specifies the upper limit for collective integration benefits obtained by weighted averaging of people’s confidences, and simple majority voting can often approximate that limit. Life-critical perceptual decisions often involve searching large image data (e.g., medical, security, and aerial imagery), but the expected benefits and merits of using different pooling algorithms are unknown for such tasks. Here, we show that expected pooling benefits are significantly greater for visual search than for single-location perceptual tasks and the prediction given by classic signal detection theory. In addition, we show that simple majority voting obtains inferior accuracy benefits for visual search relative to averaging and weighted averaging of observers’ confidences. Analysis of gaze behavior across observers suggests that the greater collective integration benefits for visual search arise from an interaction between the foveated properties of the human visual system (high foveal acuity and low peripheral acuity) and observers’ nonexhaustive search patterns, and can be predicted by an extended signal detection theory framework with trial to trial sampling from a varying mixture of high and low target detectabilities across observers (SDT-MIX). These findings advance our theoretical understanding of how to predict and enhance the wisdom of crowds for real world search tasks and could apply more generally to any decision-making task for which the minority of group members with high expertise varies from decision to decision.

scholarly journals Small-Group Interaction among Professional Librarians

1997 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen R. Tower
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Group Interaction ◽  
Group Processes ◽  
Decision Performance ◽  
Effective Decision ◽  
Effective Decision Making ◽  
Alternative Solutions

Libraries are using small groups to make decisions, and it is important that the decisions these groups make are effective. Small-group scholars argue that group processes and interactions play an important role and influence effective decision-making. Randy Y. Hirokawa developed a theory called Vigilant Interaction Theory which maintains that group interaction affects decision-making performance by directly shaping the quality of vigilance that leads to a final choice. Small groups consisting of professional librarians were used to test Hirokawa’s theory, and the results showed that group decision performance is directly related to the group’s efforts to perform critical vigilant decision-making functions. Specifically, groups that show a pattern generating more alternative solutions are more likely to develop effective decisions.

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