Mann, RP orcid.org/0000-0003-0701-1274 (Cover date: April-June 2023) Optimising collective accuracy among rational individuals in sequential decision-making with competition. Collective Intelligence, 2 (2). ISSN 2633-9137
Abstract
Theoretical results underpinning the wisdom of the crowd, such as the Condorcet Jury Theorem, point to substantial accuracy gains through aggregation of decisions or opinions, but the foundations of this theorem are routinely undermined in circumstances where individuals are able to adapt their own choices based after observing what other agents have chosen. In sequential decision-making, rational agents use the choices of others as a source of information about the correct decision, creating powerful correlations between different agents’ choices that violate the assumptions of independence on which the Condorcet Jury Theorem depends. In this paper, I show how such correlations emerge when agents are rewarded solely based on their individual accuracy, and the impact of this on collective accuracy. I then demonstrate how a simple competitive reward scheme, where agents’ rewards are greater if they correctly choose options that few have already chosen, can induce rational agents to make independent choices, returning the group to optimal levels of collective accuracy. I further show that this reward scheme is robust, offering improvements to collective accuracy across wide range of competition strengths, suggesting that such schemes could be effectively implemented in real-world contexts to improve collective wisdom.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | agent-based model; collective behaviour; condorcet; rational choice; wisdom of the crowd |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Mathematics (Leeds) > Statistics (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number MRC (Medical Research Council) MR/S032525/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 27 Apr 2023 11:34 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2023 13:44 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/26339137231176481 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:198632 |