Majority rules: how good are we at aggregating convergent opinions?

Mercier, Hugo; Morin, Olivier

doi:10.1017/ehs.2019.6

Cited by 31 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 142 publications

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“…S4). One rationale for prioritizing social information consistent with other social information is relatively straightforward: when people are motivated and able to make valid judgments, agreement among peers reliably signals accuracy (22,58). The concerted action of the three mechanisms (heuristics of keeping, and compromising based on confirmation and peer proximity) explain our experimental observations that the impact of social information strongly depends on the variance and skewness of its distribution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

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Strategies for integrating disparate social information

Molleman¹,

Tump²,

Gradassi³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Our increasingly interconnected world provides virtually unlimited opportunities to observe the behavior of others. This affords abundant useful information but also requires navigating complex social environments with people holding disparate or conflicting views. It is, however, still largely unclear how people integrate information from multiple social sources that (dis)agree with them, and among each other. We address this issue in three steps. First, we present a judgment task in which participants could adjust their judgments after observing the judgments of three peers. We experimentally varied the distribution of this social information, systematically manipulating its variance (extent of agreement among peers) and its skewness (peer judgments clustering either near or far from the participant’s). As expected, higher variance among peers reduced their impact on behavior. Importantly, observing a single peer confirming an individual’s judgment markedly decreased the influence of other—more distant—peers. Second, we develop a framework for modelling the cognitive processes underlying the integration of disparate social information, combining Bayesian updating with simple heuristics. Our model accurately accounts for observed adjustment strategies and reveals that people particularly heed social information that confirms personal judgments. Moreover, the model exposes strong inter-individual differences in strategy use. Third, using simulations, we explore the possible implications of identified strategies for belief updating more broadly. They show how confirmation effects can hamper the influence of disparate social information, exacerbate filter bubble effects and worsen group polarization. Overall, our results clarify what aspects of the social environment are, and are not, conducive to changing people’s minds.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Social information use is extensively studied across the biological and social sciences (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28). In humans, social information use often involves changing one's mind after observing the behavior of other people (29)(30)(31)(32).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies for integrating disparate social information

Molleman¹,

Tump²,

Gradassi³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…By contrast, in our current environment many of our beliefs are the result of long and opaque transmission chains-this is true of historical, scientific, and religious beliefs, and of many beliefs about who we should defer to (Origgi, 2015). There is no reason we should be properly equipped to deal very efficiently with communication stemming from these chains (Mercier & Morin, 2017;Sperber, 2009). Such gaps in epistemic vigilance might explain striking cases of apparent gullibility.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

How Gullible are We? A Review of the Evidence from Psychology and Social Science

Mercier

2017

Review of General Psychology

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A long tradition of scholarship, from ancient Greece to Marxism or some contemporary social psychology, portrays humans as strongly gullible—wont to accept harmful messages by being unduly deferent. However, if humans are reasonably well adapted, they should not be strongly gullible: they should be vigilant toward communicated information. Evidence from experimental psychology reveals that humans are equipped with well-functioning mechanisms of epistemic vigilance. They check the plausibility of messages against their background beliefs, calibrate their trust as a function of the source's competence and benevolence, and critically evaluate arguments offered to them. Even if humans are equipped with well-functioning mechanisms of epistemic vigilance, an adaptive lag might render them gullible in the face of new challenges, from clever marketing to omnipresent propaganda. I review evidence from different cultural domains often taken as proof of strong gullibility: religion, demagoguery, propaganda, political campaigns, advertising, erroneous medical beliefs, and rumors. Converging evidence reveals that communication is much less influential than often believed—that religious proselytizing, propaganda, advertising, and so forth are generally not very effective at changing people's minds. Beliefs that lead to costly behavior are even less likely to be accepted. Finally, it is also argued that most cases of acceptance of misguided communicated information do not stem from undue deference, but from a fit between the communicated information and the audience's preexisting beliefs.

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“…Our results reveal that people also weigh social information based on its consistency with other social information (‘proximity-based weighting'; figure 3 e ; electronic supplementary material, figure S4). One rationale for prioritising social information consistent with other social information is relatively straightforward: when people are motivated and able to make valid judgements, agreement among peers reliably signals accuracy [ 52 , 53 ]. The concerted action of the three mechanisms (heuristics of keeping, and compromising based on confirmation and peer proximity) explain our experimental observations that the impact of social information strongly depends on the variance and skewness of its distribution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies for integrating disparate social information

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social information use is widespread in the animal kingdom, helping individuals rapidly acquire useful knowledge and adjust to novel circumstances. In humans, the highly interconnected world provides ample opportunities to benefit from social information but also requires navigating complex social environments with people holding disparate or conflicting views. It is, however, still largely unclear how people integrate information from multiple social sources that (dis)agree with them, and among each other. We address this issue in three steps. First, we present a judgement task in which participants could adjust their judgements after observing the judgements of three peers. We experimentally varied the distribution of this social information, systematically manipulating its variance (extent of agreement among peers) and its skewness (peer judgements clustering either near or far from the participant's judgement). As expected, higher variance among peers reduced their impact on behaviour. Importantly, observing a single peer confirming a participant's own judgement markedly decreased the influence of other—more distant—peers. Second, we develop a framework for modelling the cognitive processes underlying the integration of disparate social information, combining Bayesian updating with simple heuristics. Our model accurately accounts for observed adjustment strategies and reveals that people particularly heed social information that confirms personal judgements. Moreover, the model exposes strong inter-individual differences in strategy use. Third, using simulations, we explore the possible implications of the observed strategies for belief updating. These simulations show how confirmation-based weighting can hamper the influence of disparate social information, exacerbate filter bubble effects and deepen group polarization. Overall, our results clarify what aspects of the social environment are, and are not, conducive to changing people's minds.

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Majority rules: how good are we at aggregating convergent opinions?

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 31 publications

References 142 publications

Strategies for integrating disparate social information

Strategies for integrating disparate social information

How Gullible are We? A Review of the Evidence from Psychology and Social Science

Strategies for integrating disparate social information

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