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Cited by 118Visual perception and processing mechanismsMultisensory perception and integrationDecision-Making and Behavioral Economics

What failure in collective decision-making tells us about metacognition

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Bahrami, Bahador, Olsen, Karsten, Bang, Dan, Roepstorff, Andreas, Rees, Geraint, Frith, Chris·2012·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
DOI 10.1098/rstb.2011.0420PMC PMC3318766
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Abstract

Condorcet (1785) proposed that a majority vote drawn from individual, independent and fallible (but not totally uninformed) opinions provides near-perfect accuracy if the number of voters is adequately large. Research in social psychology has since then repeatedly demonstrated that collectives can and do fail more often than expected by Condorcet. Since human collective decisions often follow from exchange of opinions, these failures provide an exquisite opportunity to understand human communication of metacognitive confidence . This question can be addressed by recasting collective decision-making as an information-integration problem similar to multisensory (cross-modal) perception. Previous research in systems neuroscience shows that one brain can integrate information from multiple senses nearly optimally. Inverting the question, we ask: under what conditions can two brains integrate information about one sensory modality optimally? We review recent work that has taken this approach and report discoveries about the quantitative limits of collective perceptual decision-making, and the role of the mode of communication and feedback in collective decision-making. We propose that shared metacognitive confidence conveys the strength of an individual's opinion and its reliability inseparably. We further suggest that a functional role of shared metacognition is to provide substitute signals in situations where outcome is necessary for learning but unavailable or impossible to establish.

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  • Even in ideal conditions where all relevant information is available, humans deviate from optimal integration of opinions.

    “Even in these ideal conditions, where all relevant information is available, humans deviate from an optimal integration of opinions [50 , 51] .”

    From Enhancing human-AI collaboration: The case of colonoscopy (2024) · cites this paper as [51]

    The Discussion reports that verbally communicating pairs made counterproductive collective decisions when their perceptual sensitivities differed, even though the competence gap was conspicuously obvious. This supports deviation from optimal opinion integration, but it does not establish the claim's ‘ideal conditions’ qualifier that all relevant information was available; the paper instead examines how differences in evidence quality and modes of communication affect decisions. (LLM, conf=0.86)

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Cited by

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Authors
Bahrami, B., Olsen, K., Bang, D., Roepstorff, A., Rees, G., & Frith, C.
Affiliations
  • Aarhus University (DK)
  • Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
Corresponding author
Bahrami, Bahador
ORCID
Venue
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher
The Royal Society
Published
2012-05-19
Volume
367
Issue
1594
Pages
1350-1365
ISSN
  • 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
  • 1471-2970
DOI
10.1098/rstb.2011.0420
PMC
PMC3318766
OpenAlex
W2153016924
Cited by
118
References
8
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FWCI
0.44
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Wellcome Trust (091593)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
Keywords
group decision making, metacognition, metacognitive confidence, Condorcet jury theorem, information integration, multisensory perception, perceptual decision making, feedback
MeSH terms
Choice Behavior, Cognition, Decision Making, Humans, Models, Psychological

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