The Wisdom of Select Crowds
The Wisdom of Select Crowds
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DOI：
10.1037/a0036677
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发表时间：
2014-08-01
影响因子：
7.6
通讯作者：
Larrick, Richard P.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mannes, Albert E.;Soll, Jack B.;Larrick, Richard P.
社会心理学家很早就认识到统计群体的力量。当对某些事实（例如下季度的失业率）的个人判断进行平均时，平均意见通常比大多数个人估计更准确，这种模式通常被称为群体智慧。平均的准确性通常也超过了群体中被认为最有知识的个人的准确性。然而，平均或依赖单一判断都不是一个稳健的策略；每个在某些情况下表现良好，而在其他情况下表现不佳。作为替代方案，我们引入了选择人群策略，该策略根据能力提示（例如，最近几次判断的准确性）对法官进行排名，并对顶级法官（例如前 5 名）的意见进行平均。通过模拟和对 90 个档案数据集的分析，我们表明，由 5 名知识渊博的法官组成的精选人群在各种可能的设置中都能产生非常准确的判断 - 该策略既准确又稳健。接下来，我们研究人们更喜欢如何使用来自人群的信息。先前的研究表明，人们不信任群体和平均等机械过程。我们在 3 个实验中表明，正如预期的那样，人们会被专家所吸引，并且不喜欢人群平均值，但更重要的是，他们对选择人群策略持积极态度，并愿意使用它。因此，选择人群策略作为一种帮助个人挖掘集体智慧的机制是准确、稳健且有吸引力的。
Social psychologists have long recognized the power of statisticized groups. When individual judgments about some fact (e.g., the unemployment rate for next quarter) are averaged together, the average opinion is typically more accurate than most of the individual estimates, a pattern often referred to as the wisdom of crowds. The accuracy of averaging also often exceeds that of the individual perceived as most knowledgeable in the group. However, neither averaging nor relying on a single judge is a robust strategy; each performs well in some settings and poorly in others. As an alternative, we introduce the select-crowd strategy, which ranks judges based on a cue to ability (e.g., the accuracy of several recent judgments) and averages the opinions of the top judges, such as the top 5. Through both simulation and an analysis of 90 archival data sets, we show that select crowds of 5 knowledgeable judges yield very accurate judgments across a wide range of possible settings-the strategy is both accurate and robust. Following this, we examine how people prefer to use information from a crowd. Previous research suggests that people are distrustful of crowds and of mechanical processes such as averaging. We show in 3 experiments that, as expected, people are drawn to experts and dislike crowd averages-but, critically, they view the select-crowd strategy favorably and are willing to use it. The select-crowd strategy is thus accurate, robust, and appealing as a mechanism for helping individuals tap collective wisdom.