Summit
2024 APS Global Psychological Science Summit · 2024
The Wisdom of Extremized Crowds: Promoting Erroneous Divergent Opinions Reduces Collective Error
- Federico Barrera-Lemarchand
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Federico Barrera-Lemarchand
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) - Federico Barrera-Lemarchand
Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella - Pablo Balenzuela
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Pablo Balenzuela
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) - Bahador Bahrami
Centre for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin - Bahador Bahrami
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London - Bahador Bahrami
Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich - Ophelia Deroy
Faculty of Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian University - Ophelia Deroy
Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London - Ophelia Deroy
Munich Centre for Neuroscience, Ludwig Maximilian University - Joaquín Navajas
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) - Joaquín Navajas
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Negocios. Centro de Inteligencia Artificial y Neurociencia (CIAN). Laboratorio de Neurociencia. - Joaquín Navajas
Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
Abstract
We present a novel approach to reduce the collective error of a crowd by promoting erroneous divergent opinions. Consistent with our mathematical modeling, four experiments (N=1362) demonstrate that this method is effective for estimation and forecasting tasks. Our findings provide new theoretical insights into the epistemic value of collective decision-making.
Decision Making
