Group Decisions Based on Confidence Weighted Majority Voting

Autor/inn/en	Meyen, Sascha; Sigg, Dorothee M. B.; von Luxburg, Ulrike; Franz, Volker H.
Titel	Group Decisions Based on Confidence Weighted Majority Voting
Quelle	In: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 6 (2021), Artikel 18 (13 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Meyen, Sascha)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	2365-7464
DOI	10.1186/s41235-021-00279-0
Schlagwörter	Group Discussion; Decision Making; Voting; Simulation; Accuracy; Benchmarking + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Gruppendiskussion; Decision-making; Entscheidungsfindung; Abstimmung; Simulation program; Simulationsprogramm
Abstract	Background: It has repeatedly been reported that, when making decisions under uncertainty, groups outperform individuals. Real groups are often replaced by simulated groups: Instead of performing an actual group discussion, individual responses are aggregated by a numerical computation. While studies have typically used unweighted majority voting (MV) for this aggregation, the theoretically optimal method is confidence weighted majority voting (CWMV)--if independent and accurate confidence ratings from the individual group members are available. To determine which simulations (MV vs. CWMV) reflect real group processes better, we applied formal cognitive modeling and compared simulated group responses to real group responses. Results: Simulated group decisions based on CWMV matched the accuracy of real group decisions, while simulated group decisions based on MV showed lower accuracy. CWMV predicted the confidence that groups put into their group decisions well. However, real groups treated individual votes to some extent more equally weighted than suggested by CWMV. Additionally, real groups tend to put lower confidence into their decisions compared to CWMV simulations. Conclusion: Our results highlight the importance of taking individual confidences into account when simulating group decisions: We found that real groups can aggregate individual confidences in a way that matches statistical aggregations given by CWMV to some extent. This implies that research using simulated group decisions should use CWMV instead of MV as a benchmark to compare real groups to. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01