Understanding the effect of individual decision-making strategies on collective decision outcomes

从委员会到政府，集体决策是社会的核心。一个重要的悬而未决的问题是，那些遵循他人(社会学习者)的选择而不是评估自己(个体学习者)选项的优点的个人如何影响集体决策。指导这个项目的三个核心问题是：1)当一个集体的许多成员都是社交学习者时，它会选择最好的可用选项吗？2)集体的结果如何取决于个人的属性和选项？3)社交学习者将如何影响社会适应新证据的能力？这项工作通过同时而不是孤立地检查各种因素，扩大了目前对集体决策的理解。它有助于预测和管理重要的现实世界集体决策系统中的不稳定性，例如民主选举、陪审团裁决和公司中的团队合作。此外，人类面临的最紧迫的挑战，如气候变化、技术破坏和流行病，都严重受制于全球集体决定。该项目使用三种方法的跨学科组合来调查社会学习对集体决策的影响。首先，该研究项目开发了一个动态系统模型，研究社会和非社会因素的相互作用如何影响集体决策和对新信息的调整。一个初步模型预测，当社交学习者的比例超过阈值时，意见构成将发生关键转变。目前的项目将这一框架扩大到包括承诺的少数群体的存在、关于备选方案优点的新证据以及网络结构的影响。该模型推导出了群体可以选择最有价值的选项的条件。其次，该项目通过收集和分析观察和调查数据来测试模型的预测，并估计社会学习对现实社会信念和行为的影响。第三，小组水平和个人水平的人类参与者实验在受控条件下检验模型预测。个人层面的实验揭示了影响个人采用社会或个人学习的因素。这项研究引发了一场关于个人学习策略(个人或社会)如何影响集体决策的长期辩论。它结合和综合了社会心理学原理和实验、数学建模方法和统计分析。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Collective decisions are central to societies, from committees to governments. An important open question is how collective decisions are affected by individuals who follow the choices of others (social learners) instead of evaluating the merit of options on their own (individual learners). The three central questions guiding this project are: 1) Will a collective choose the best available option when many of its members are social learners? 2) How does the collective outcome depend on the properties of individuals and the options? and 3) How will social learners affect society’s ability to adjust to new evidence? This work expands the current understanding of collective decisions by examining a variety of factors simultaneously rather than in isolation. It helps anticipate and manage instabilities in important real-world collective decision-making systems such as democratic elections, jury decisions, and teamwork in companies. Moreover, the most pressing challenges facing humanity, such as climate change, technological disruption, and pandemics, are critically subject to global collective decisions. The project investigates the effect of social learning on collective decision-making using a transdisciplinary combination of three methods. First, the program of research develops a dynamical-system model that studies how the interactions of social and non-social factors affect collective decisions and adjustments to new information. A preliminary model predicted a critical transition in opinion composition as the proportion of the social learners crossed a threshold. The current project expands this framework to include the presence of committed minorities, the introduction of new evidence about the merit of options, and the effect of network structures. The model derives conditions under which groups can settle on the option with the most merit. Second, the project tests the predictions of the model by collecting and analyzing observational and survey data and estimates the effect of social learning on beliefs and behaviors of real-world societies. Third, group-level and individual-level human participant experiments test model predictions in controlled conditions. The individual-level experiments uncover factors that influence individuals to adopt social or individual learning. This research informs a long-lasting debate on how individual learning strategies (individual or social) affect collective decisions. It combines and synthesizes social psychological principles and experiments, mathematical modeling methods, and statistical analysis. Results inform a wide range of audiences with the purpose of providing key insights for improving collective decisions in many real-world domains.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.