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How can groups make good decisions? | Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely
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How can groups make good decisions? | Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely

Introduction

The speaker discusses how groups can make good decisions and the factors that influence collective decision-making.

Factors influencing collective decision-making

  • Crowds are wise when there's independent thinking.
  • Wisdom of the crowds can be destroyed by peer pressure, publicity, social media, or sometimes even simple conversations that influence how people think.

Benefits of talking in a group

  • A group could exchange knowledge, correct and revise each other and even come up with new ideas.

Experiment on small groups

The speaker describes an experiment conducted to test if small groups can interact to reach better decisions.

Experiment details

  • Experiment was performed in Buenos Aires, Argentina with more than 10,000 participants in a TEDx event.
  • Participants were asked questions like "What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?" and "How many times does the word 'Yesterday' appear in the Beatles song 'Yesterday'?"
  • Participants wrote down their own estimate.
  • The crowd was divided into groups of five and invited to come up with a group answer.

Results

  • Averaging the answers of the groups after they reached consensus was much more accurate than averaging all individual opinions before debate.
  • After talking with others in small groups, crowds collectively come up with better judgments.

Experiment on social and political issues

The speaker describes another experiment conducted at TED conference in Vancouver to test if aggregating results of debates in small groups can help decide on social and political issues critical for our future.

Experiment details

  • Participants were presented two moral dilemmas related to AI development and genetic engineering.
  • They were asked to individually judge whether each action described was right or wrong on a scale from zero to ten.

Results

  • Majority thought it was acceptable to ignore the feelings of the AI and shut it down.
  • Majority thought it was wrong to play with our genes to select for cosmetic changes that aren't related to health.

The Science of Making Decisions

In this section, the speaker introduces the topic of decision-making and explains how people with opposing views can reach a consensus.

Opposing Views Can Reach Consensus

  • Groups composed of people with completely opposite views can reach a consensus.
  • People with extreme opinions are more confident in their answers.
  • Highly confident grays understand that both arguments have merit.
  • Groups that include highly confident grays are much more likely to reach consensus.

How Do Groups Reach Consensus?

In this section, the speaker explains how groups reach consensus and introduces the concept of robust average.

Robust Average

  • The group largely ignores absurd answers by giving much more weight to the vote of people in the middle.
  • Groups give much less weight to outliers, and instead, the consensus turned out to be a robust average of individual answers.
  • This was a spontaneous behavior of the group without any hint on how to reach consensus.

Good Collective Decisions Require Deliberation and Diversity

In this section, the speaker discusses good collective decisions and suggests a different method for balancing diversity of opinions and thoughtful debates.

Balancing Diversity of Opinions and Thoughtful Debates

  • Good collective decisions require deliberation and diversity of opinions.
  • Direct or indirect voting is good for diversity but not so good for thoughtful debates.
  • Forming small groups that converge to a single decision while still maintaining diversity of opinions may be effective in balancing these two goals at the same time.

Conclusion

In this section, the speaker concludes by acknowledging that it is much easier to agree on factual issues than on moral, political, and ideological issues. However, using science to help us understand how we interact and make decisions will hopefully spark interesting new ways to construct a better democracy.

Constructing a Better Democracy

  • Using science to help us understand how we interact and make decisions will hopefully spark interesting new ways to construct a better democracy.
Channel: TED
Video description

We all know that when we make decisions in groups, they don't always go right -- and sometimes they go very wrong. How can groups make good decisions? With his colleague Dan Ariely, neuroscientist Mariano Sigman has been inquiring into how we interact to reach decisions by performing experiments with live crowds around the world. In this fun, fact-filled explainer, he shares some intriguing results -- as well as some implications for how it might impact our political system. In a time when people seem to be more polarized than ever, Sigman says, better understanding how groups interact and reach conclusions might spark interesting new ways to construct a healthier democracy. Check out more TED Talks: http://www.ted.com The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Follow TED on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/TED