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Barrera-Lemarchand F, Balenzuela P, Bahrami B, Deroy O, Navajas J. Promoting Erroneous Divergent Opinions Increases the Wisdom of Crowds. Psychol Sci 2024; 35:872-886. [PMID: 38865591 DOI: 10.1177/09567976241252138] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2024] Open
Abstract
The aggregation of many lay judgments generates surprisingly accurate estimates. This phenomenon, called the "wisdom of crowds," has been demonstrated in domains such as medical decision-making and financial forecasting. Previous research identified two factors driving this effect: the accuracy of individual assessments and the diversity of opinions. Most available strategies to enhance the wisdom of crowds have focused on improving individual accuracy while neglecting the potential of increasing opinion diversity. Here, we study a complementary approach to reduce collective error by promoting erroneous divergent opinions. This strategy proposes to anchor half of the crowd to a small value and the other half to a large value before eliciting and averaging all estimates. Consistent with our mathematical modeling, four experiments (N = 1,362 adults) demonstrated that this method is effective for estimation and forecasting tasks. Beyond the practical implications, these findings offer new theoretical insights into the epistemic value of collective decision-making.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federico Barrera-Lemarchand
- Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires
| | - Pablo Balenzuela
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires
| | - Bahador Bahrami
- Crowd Cognition Group, Department of General Psychology and Education, Ludwig Maximilian University
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London
- Centre for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ophelia Deroy
- Munich Centre for Neuroscience, Ludwig Maximilian University
- Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London
- Faculty of Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian University
| | - Joaquin Navajas
- Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
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Zimmerman F, Pedraza L, Navajas J, Balenzuela P. Attraction by pairwise coherence explains the emergence of ideological sorting. PNAS NEXUS 2024; 3:pgae263. [PMID: 39081784 PMCID: PMC11288373 DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae263] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2024] [Accepted: 06/11/2024] [Indexed: 08/02/2024]
Abstract
Political polarization has become a growing concern in democratic societies, as it drives tribal alignments and erodes civic deliberation among citizens. Given its prevalence across different countries, previous research has sought to understand under which conditions people tend to endorse extreme opinions. However, in polarized contexts, citizens not only adopt more extreme views but also become correlated across issues that are, a priori, seemingly unrelated. This phenomenon, known as "ideological sorting", has been receiving greater attention in recent years but the micro-level mechanisms underlying its emergence remain poorly understood. Here, we study the conditions under which a social dynamic system is expected to become ideologically sorted as a function of the mechanisms of interaction between its individuals. To this end, we developed and analyzed a multidimensional agent-based model that incorporates two mechanisms: homophily (where people tend to interact with those holding similar opinions) and pairwise-coherence favoritism (where people tend to interact with ingroups holding politically coherent opinions). We numerically integrated the model's master equations that perfectly describe the system's dynamics and found that ideological sorting only emerges in models that include pairwise-coherence favoritism. We then compared the model's outcomes with empirical data from 24,035 opinions across 67 topics and found that pairwise-coherence favoritism is significantly present in datasets that measure political attitudes but absent across topics not considered related to politics. Overall, this work combines theoretical approaches from system dynamics with model-based analyses of empirical data to uncover a potential mechanism underlying the pervasiveness of ideological sorting.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federico Zimmerman
- Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, C1428BCW, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Godoy Cruz 2290, C1425FQB, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, C1428BCW, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02163, USA
- Digital, Data and Design Institute, Harvard University, Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02163, USA
| | - Lucía Pedraza
- Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Instituto de Física Interdisciplinaria y Aplicada (INFINA), CONICET, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Joaquín Navajas
- Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, C1428BCW, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Godoy Cruz 2290, C1425FQB, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, C1428BCW, Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Pablo Balenzuela
- Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Instituto de Física Interdisciplinaria y Aplicada (INFINA), CONICET, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Linczuk J, Górski PJ, Szymanski BK, Hołyst JA. Multidimensional attributes expose Heider balance dynamics to measurements. Sci Rep 2023; 13:15568. [PMID: 37730884 PMCID: PMC10511462 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42390-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2023] [Accepted: 09/09/2023] [Indexed: 09/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Most of studied social interactions arise from dyadic relations. An exception is Heider Balance Theory that postulates the existence of triad dynamics, which however has been elusive to observe. Here, we discover a sufficient condition for the Heider dynamics observability: assigning the edge signs according to multiple opinions of connected agents. Using longitudinal records of university student mutual contacts and opinions, we create a coevolving network on which we introduce models of student interactions. These models account for: multiple topics of individual student opinions, influence of such opinions on dyadic relations, and influence of triadic relations on opinions. We show that the triadic influence is empirically measurable for static and dynamic observables when signs of edges are defined by multidimensional differences between opinions on all topics. Yet, when these signs are defined by a difference between opinions on each topic separately, the triadic interactions' influence is indistinguishable from noise.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joanna Linczuk
- Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Piotr J Górski
- Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662, Warsaw, Poland.
| | - Boleslaw K Szymanski
- NEST Center, Dept. Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.
- Academy of Social Sciences, Henryka Sienkiewicza 9, 90-113, Łódź, Poland.
| | - Janusz A Hołyst
- Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662, Warsaw, Poland
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Goldenberg A, Abruzzo JM, Huang Z, Schöne J, Bailey D, Willer R, Halperin E, Gross JJ. Homophily and acrophily as drivers of political segregation. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:219-230. [PMID: 36411346 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01474-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/03/2021] [Accepted: 10/06/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we propose that, in addition to homophily, people's social tie decisions are driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others who have more extreme political views (rather than more moderate). We examined this using a paradigm in which participants share emotions and attitudes on political policies, observe others' responses and choose which others to affiliate with. In four studies (N = 1,235), both liberal and conservative participants' social tie decisions reflected the presence of acrophily. We found that participants who viewed peers who expressed more extreme views as more prototypical of their political group also tended to engage in greater acrophily. These studies identify a previously overlooked tendency in tie formation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amit Goldenberg
- Harvard Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. .,Harvard Institute of Digital Data and Design, Harvard Science and Engineering Complex, Allston, MA, USA. .,Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, USA.
| | - Joseph M Abruzzo
- Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Zi Huang
- Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Jonas Schöne
- University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, UK
| | - David Bailey
- Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Robb Willer
- Stanford University, Department of Sociology, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Eran Halperin
- Hebrew University, Department of Psychology, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - James J Gross
- Stanford University, Department of Psychology, Stanford, CA, USA
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