When are two heads better than one and why?
Abstract
A recent study, using a perceptual task, indicated that two heads were better than one provided that the members could communicate freely, presumably sharing their confidence in their judgments. Capitalizing on recent work on subjective confidence, I replicated this effect in the absence of any dyadic interaction by selecting on each trial the decision of the more confident member of a virtual dyad. However, because subjective confidence monitors the consensuality rather than the accuracy of a decision, when most participants were in error, reliance on the more confident member yielded worse decisions than those of the better individual. Assuming that for each issue group decisions are dominated by the more confident member, these results help specify when groups will be more or less accurate than individuals.
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Optimal integration of opinions should consider judgments, confidence, and average objective accuracy of agents.
“Optimal integration of opinions, whether from human or artificial agents, should consider the following factors: their judgments, their confidence in the correctness of their opinions, and the average objective accuracy of the agents in similar situations in the past.”
From Enhancing human-AI collaboration: The case of colonoscopy (2024) · cites this paper as [45]
High confidence is an indicator of accuracy when judgments are independent but becomes an indicator of consensus when social influence takes place.
“Therefore, high confidence is an indicator of accuracy when judgments are independent but becomes an indicator of consensus when social influence takes place [43], [44].”
From Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation (2013) · cites this paper as [43]
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Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation
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Enhancing human-AI collaboration: The case of colonoscopy
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- Authors
- Koriat, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Haifa (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Koriat, Asher
- ORCID
- Koriat, Asher
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2012-04-20
- Volume
- 336
- Issue
- 6079
- Pages
- 360-362
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2086134843
- Cited by
- 256
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 11.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- group decision making, subjective confidence, dyadic interaction, replication, perceptual tasks
- MeSH terms
- Algorithms, Decision Making, Female, Group Processes, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Judgment, Male, Models, Psychological, Task Performance and Analysis
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