Reina, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-4745-992X, Bose, T. orcid.org/0000-0003-0014-4090, Srivastava, V. orcid.org/0000-0002-9786-0159 et al. (1 more author) (2023) Asynchrony rescues statistically optimal group decisions from information cascades through emergent leaders. Royal Society Open Science, 10 (3). 230175. ISSN 2054-5703
Abstract
It is usually assumed that information cascades are most likely to occur when an early but incorrect opinion spreads through the group. Here, we analyse models of confidence-sharing in groups and reveal the opposite result: simple but plausible models of naive-Bayesian decision-making exhibit information cascades when group decisions are synchronous; however, when group decisions are asynchronous, the early decisions reached by Bayesian decision-makers tend to be correct and dominate the group consensus dynamics. Thus early decisions actually rescue the group from making errors, rather than contribute to it. We explore the likely realism of our assumed decision-making rule with reference to the evolution of mechanisms for aggregating social information, and known psychological and neuroscientific mechanisms.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | information cascades; Bayesian brain; emergent leaders; collective decision-making; behaviour; cognition; computational biology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EUROPEAN COMMISSION - HORIZON 2020 647704 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Mar 2023 11:54 |
Last Modified: | 21 Mar 2023 11:54 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rsos.230175 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:197508 |