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Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds

Abstract

The aggregation of many independent estimates can outperform the most accurate individual judgement1,2,3. This centenarian finding1,2, popularly known as the 'wisdom of crowds'3, has been applied to problems ranging from the diagnosis of cancer4 to financial forecasting5. It is widely believed that social influence undermines collective wisdom by reducing the diversity of opinions within the crowd. Here, we show that if a large crowd is structured in small independent groups, deliberation and social influence within groups improve the crowd’s collective accuracy. We asked a live crowd (N = 5,180) to respond to general-knowledge questions (for example, "What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?"). Participants first answered individually, then deliberated and made consensus decisions in groups of five, and finally provided revised individual estimates. We found that averaging consensus decisions was substantially more accurate than aggregating the initial independent opinions. Remarkably, combining as few as four consensus choices outperformed the wisdom of thousands of individuals.

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Fig. 1: Aggregating debates and the wisdom of crowds.
Fig. 2: The effect of deliberation on bias and variance.
Fig. 3: The superior wisdom of deliberative crowds.

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Acknowledgements

J.N. and B.B. were supported by the European Research Council StG (NEUROCODEC, #309865); M.S. was supported by the James McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Understanding Human Cognition—Scholar Award (Grant #220020334), and by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina)—Préstamo BID PICT (Grant #2013-1653). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank M. Sartorio for assistance in data collection.

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J.N., T.N., G.G. and M.S. designed and conducted the experiments. J.N., B.B. and M.S. developed the analysis approach. J.N. analysed the data. J.N., B.B. and M.S. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Joaquin Navajas.

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Navajas, J., Niella, T., Garbulsky, G. et al. Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds. Nat Hum Behav 2, 126–132 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0273-4

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