Mann, R.P. orcid.org/0000-0003-0701-1274 (2024) Agents seeking long-term access to the wisdom of the crowd reduce immediate decision-making accuracy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 379 (1916). 20220467. ISSN 0962-8436
Abstract
Living in groups offers social animals the significant advantage of accessing collective wisdom and enhanced information processing, enabling more accurate decisions related to foraging, navigation and habitat selection. Preserving group membership is crucial for sustaining access to collective wisdom, incentivizing animals to prioritize group cohesion. However, when individuals encounter divergent information about the quality of various options, this can create a conflict between pursuing immediate rewards and the maintenance of group membership to improve access to future pay-offs. In this study, I show that rational agents who seek to maximize long-term rewards will be more inclined to follow the decisions of their peers than those with short-term horizons. In doing so, they necessarily make less-rewarding decisions in the short-term, which manifests in a lower individual accuracy when choosing the better of two options. Furthermore, I demonstrate that intuitions about collective wisdom can be misleading in groups of agents who prioritize long-term rewards, with disagreement being a better signal for the accuracy of collective choices than consensus. These results demonstrate that observed patterns of sociality should be interpreted in the context of the life history of an individual and its peers, rather than through the lens of an isolated decision.
This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘Understanding age and society using natural populations’.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). 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: | rationality, decision-making, life history, collective intelligence |
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/X036863/1 MRC (Medical Research Council) MR/S032525/1 Templeton World Charity Foundation UR FAO GR533391 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Jan 2024 12:00 |
Last Modified: | 08 Nov 2024 13:01 |
Published Version: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rst... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rstb.2022.0467 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207408 |