Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds
Open accessAbstract
Significance: Since the discovery of the wisdom of crowds over 100 years ago theories of collective intelligence have held that group accuracy requires either statistical independence or informational diversity among individual beliefs. Empirical evidence suggests that allowing people to observe the beliefs of others leads to increased similarity of individual estimates, reducing independence and diversity without a corresponding increase in group accuracy. As a result, social influence is expected to undermine the wisdom of crowds. We present theoretical predictions and experimental findings demonstrating that, in decentralized networks, social influence generates learning dynamics that reliably improve the wisdom of crowds. We identify general conditions under which influence, not independence, produces the most accurate group judgments.
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Highly connected individuals possess outsized influence, and it is unlikely that their centrality is solely related to being a producer of higher-quality information.
“Highly connected individuals possess outsized influence, and it is unlikely that their centrality is solely related to being a producer of higher-quality information”
From Stewardship of global collective behavior (2021) · cites this paper as [84]
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- Authors
- Becker, J., Brackbill, D., & Centola, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-06-12
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 26
- Pages
- E5070-E5076
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5495222
- OpenAlex
- W2625771436
- Semantic Scholar
- 9f0004e98790e15ca66dd250b27a02a4d3912dbd
- Cited by
- 397
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 63 · 2022: 42 · 2021: 96 · 2020: 39 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 5 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 12.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Game Theory and Applications
- Keywords
- wisdom of crowds, social influence, collective intelligence, decentralized networks, learning dynamics, informational diversity, statistical independence, group judgment
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Models, Theoretical, Social Behavior, Social Support, Emotional Intelligence
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