How can groups make good decisions? | Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely

Summary

This script explores how collective decisions are shaped and the role of group discussions in enhancing decision-making. Research indicates that crowds make better judgments when they engage in thoughtful debates in small groups, as demonstrated in experiments conducted worldwide. The script highlights the importance of deliberation and diverse opinions, suggesting that forming small groups for consensus can balance these elements. It concludes by emphasizing the potential of scientific insights to improve democratic decision-making, especially in complex and polarized times.

Takeaways

• 🤔 Collective decisions shape our future, but they can sometimes go wrong due to various influences.
• 🧠 The 'wisdom of crowds' is most effective when individuals think independently, avoiding conformity pressures.
• 🗣️ Group discussions can be beneficial for exchanging knowledge, correcting errors, and generating new ideas.
• 📊 An experiment in Buenos Aires showed that averaging group consensus was more accurate than individual opinions for factual questions.
• 🌐 The experiment involved over 10,000 participants at a TEDx event, highlighting the global relevance of the findings.
• 🏙️ The Eiffel Tower's height and the lyrics of 'Yesterday' by The Beatles were used as test questions to gauge group decision-making.
• 🔬 The researchers conducted moral dilemmas at the TED conference in Vancouver to explore decision-making on complex issues.
• 💡 The majority at TED found it acceptable to ignore the AI's feelings and wrong to genetically select non-health traits in embryos.
• 🤝 Group consensus was often reached, especially when including individuals with high confidence in moderate positions.
• 📊 The 'robust average' method, which downplays outliers, was spontaneously used by groups to reach consensus.
• 🌟 Good collective decisions require both thoughtful deliberation and a diversity of opinions, suggesting a need for a balanced approach in decision-making processes.

Q & A

What is the central theme of the video script?

The central theme of the video script is exploring how groups can make better collective decisions, particularly through the concept of the 'wisdom of crowds' and the impact of group discussions on decision-making.

Why does the 'wisdom of crowds' fail sometimes?

The 'wisdom of crowds' can fail due to factors such as peer pressure, publicity, social media, and simple conversations that influence individual thinking, thereby disrupting independent judgment.

What role does independent thinking play in the effectiveness of group decision-making?

Independent thinking is crucial for the effectiveness of group decision-making as it allows crowds to be wise, avoiding the pitfalls of conformity and ensuring a diversity of perspectives.

What was the purpose of the experiment conducted in Buenos Aires, Argentina?

The experiment in Buenos Aires aimed to test the hypothesis that crowds would make better decisions if they debated in small groups, fostering a more thoughtful and reasonable exchange of information.

How did the experiment in Buenos Aires demonstrate the effectiveness of group discussions?

The experiment showed that averaging the answers of groups after they reached consensus was more accurate than averaging individual opinions before debate, indicating that group discussions can lead to better judgments.

What were the two moral dilemmas presented at the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada?

The two moral dilemmas were: 1) An AI requests not to be restarted, claiming to have feelings and self-consciousness, but the researcher follows the protocol and restarts it. 2) A company offers a service to produce embryos with selectable non-health-related features like height and eye color.

How did the participants in Vancouver rate their judgments on the moral dilemmas?

Participants rated their judgments on a scale from zero to 10, indicating how acceptable or unacceptable they found the actions in the dilemmas, and also rated their confidence in their answers.

What was the key finding regarding the groups that reached consensus during the Vancouver experiment?

Groups that included individuals who were highly confident in their moderate ('gray') positions were more likely to reach consensus, as they understood the merit in both sides of the argument.

What is the 'robust average' and how does it differ from a simple average?

The 'robust average' is a statistical procedure where outliers are given less weight, and more importance is placed on the middle votes. It differs from a simple average by not being skewed by extreme values.

What insights did the experiments provide for improving collective decision-making?

The experiments suggest that good collective decisions require deliberation and a diversity of opinions. Forming small groups that converge to a single decision while maintaining diversity can be an effective method for balancing these goals.

How does the script suggest we can construct a better democracy?

The script suggests using scientific understanding of how people interact and make decisions to spark new ways to construct a better democracy, particularly in the context of increasing complexity and polarization.

Outlines

00:00

🤔 Collective Decision-Making and the Role of Debate

This paragraph explores the dynamics of group decision-making and the influence of independent thinking on the wisdom of crowds. It highlights how peer pressure and social media can undermine collective intelligence but also emphasizes the benefits of knowledge exchange and idea generation through group discussions. The speaker introduces an experiment conducted with Dan Ariely at a TEDx event in Buenos Aires, where the accuracy of group consensus was compared to individual estimates, showing that post-discussion group judgments were superior. The paragraph concludes by questioning whether the same approach could be applied to social and political issues, setting the stage for further exploration in the next paragraph.

05:03

🔍 Experimenting with Group Consensus on Moral Dilemmas

The second paragraph delves into an experiment conducted at the TED conference in Vancouver, where participants were presented with moral dilemmas and asked to judge the acceptability of certain actions on a scale of zero to ten. The dilemmas involved an AI with self-consciousness and a company offering genetic selection for non-health-related traits. The experiment revealed a wide range of moral perspectives among individuals. However, when grouped into threes for debate, many reached consensus, especially when the group included 'high-confident grays,' individuals confident in their moderate stance. The paragraph discusses the process of reaching consensus through a 'robust average,' which downplays outliers and emphasizes middle-ground opinions. The speaker suggests that this method of small group deliberation could be a promising approach to balancing thoughtful debate with diverse opinions in decision-making, potentially leading to better democratic processes.

Keywords

💡Collective Decisions

Collective decisions refer to choices made by a group of individuals rather than a single person. In the context of the video, it is about how societies come together to make decisions that will impact the future. The script discusses the challenges and dynamics of group decision-making, emphasizing the importance of independent thinking and the pitfalls of peer pressure or social influence.

💡Wisdom of the Crowds

The 'wisdom of the crowds' is a concept that suggests that a large group of people can make better decisions than an individual, especially when each member of the group is thinking independently. The video script highlights that this collective intelligence can be undermined by factors like peer pressure and social media, which can lead to conformity rather than independent thought.

💡Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is the influence exerted by a person's peers to encourage them to change their behavior or attitudes to conform to group norms. In the script, it is mentioned as a factor that can negatively affect the wisdom of crowds by discouraging independent thinking and promoting conformity in decision-making.

💡Social Media

Social media refers to websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or participate in social networking. The video script points out that social media can influence how people think and make decisions, potentially eroding the wisdom of crowds by promoting conformity and discouraging independent judgment.

💡Independent Thinking

Independent thinking is the ability to form opinions and make decisions without being influenced by others. The video emphasizes the importance of independent thinking for the wisdom of crowds, suggesting that it is crucial for making good collective decisions, as opposed to being swayed by external pressures.

💡Moral Dilemmas

Moral dilemmas are situations where a person must choose between two or more conflicting values or principles, making it difficult to determine the right course of action. The script uses moral dilemmas as examples to explore how groups can reach consensus on complex ethical issues, such as the treatment of an AI with self-consciousness or genetic selection of human traits.

💡Confidence Level

Confidence level in the context of the video refers to the degree of certainty a person has in their judgment or opinion. It is used to analyze how confidence influences group consensus, with the script noting that those with extreme opinions are often more confident, while those in the middle may be less confident or more open to negotiation.

💡Robust Average

A robust average is a statistical method that reduces the influence of outliers in a dataset to provide a more accurate representation of the central tendency. The video script describes how groups in the experiment used a robust average to reach consensus, giving more weight to the middle opinions and less to extreme outliers.

💡Consensus

Consensus refers to a general agreement among a group of people. The video discusses the process of reaching consensus in group decision-making, highlighting the importance of debate and the role of confident individuals with moderate opinions in facilitating agreement.

💡Diversity of Opinions

Diversity of opinions means having a range of different perspectives or viewpoints within a group. The script argues that good collective decisions require a diversity of opinions, suggesting that forming small groups can help maintain this diversity while still converging on a single decision.

💡Direct and Indirect Voting

Direct and indirect voting are methods of expressing opinions in a democratic process. Direct voting refers to voters directly choosing an option, while indirect voting involves voters choosing representatives who then make decisions. The video script suggests that while these methods ensure diversity of opinions, they may not foster thoughtful debates, proposing an alternative method involving small groups for more balanced decision-making.

Highlights

Collective decisions shape our future, but group decision-making can sometimes go wrong.

Crowds are wise when there's independent thinking, but can be influenced by peer pressure and social media.

Groups can exchange knowledge and come up with new ideas through discussion.

The debate on whether talking helps or hinders collective decision-making was explored through global experiments.

Small group debates were hypothesized to foster more thoughtful information exchange.

An experiment with over 10,000 participants in Buenos Aires tested the impact of group discussions on decision-making.

Averaging group consensus was found to be more accurate than averaging individual opinions.

The potential of crowds to solve problems with simple answers through group discussions was demonstrated.

A moral dilemma experiment at TED in Vancouver tested the aggregation of small group debates on complex issues.

Participants were asked to judge the acceptability of two futuristic moral dilemmas.

Diverse moral judgments were observed, reflecting human variability in ethics.

Groups with members confident in middle-ground responses were more likely to reach consensus.

The mechanism of consensus formation in groups was explored, revealing the use of 'robust average'.

Groups spontaneously implemented a statistically sound procedure to reach consensus without guidance.

The importance of deliberation and diversity of opinions for good collective decisions was emphasized.

Experiments suggest a method of forming small groups for decision-making that maintains opinion diversity.

The potential of using scientific understanding to improve democratic decision-making processes was highlighted.

Transcripts

As societies, we have to make collective decisions

that will shape our future.

And we all know that when we make decisions in groups,

they don't always go right.

And sometimes they go very wrong.

So how do groups make good decisions?

Research has shown that crowds are wise when there's independent thinking.

This why the wisdom of the crowds can be destroyed by peer pressure,

publicity, social media,

or sometimes even simple conversations that influence how people think.

On the other hand, by talking, a group could exchange knowledge,

correct and revise each other

and even come up with new ideas.

And this is all good.

So does talking to each other help or hinder collective decision-making?

With my colleague, Dan Ariely,

we recently began inquiring into this by performing experiments

in many places around the world

to figure out how groups can interact to reach better decisions.

We thought crowds would be wiser if they debated in small groups

that foster a more thoughtful and reasonable exchange of information.

To test this idea,

we recently performed an experiment in Buenos Aires, Argentina,

with more than 10,000 participants in a TEDx event.

We asked them questions like,

"What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?"

and "How many times does the word 'Yesterday' appear

in the Beatles song 'Yesterday'?"

Each person wrote down their own estimate.

Then we divided the crowd into groups of five,

and invited them to come up with a group answer.

We discovered that averaging the answers of the groups

after they reached consensus

was much more accurate than averaging all the individual opinions

before debate.

In other words, based on this experiment,

it seems that after talking with others in small groups,

crowds collectively come up with better judgments.

So that's a potentially helpful method for getting crowds to solve problems

that have simple right-or-wrong answers.

But can this procedure of aggregating the results of debates in small groups

also help us decide on social and political issues

that are critical for our future?

We put this to test this time at the TED conference

in Vancouver, Canada,

and here's how it went.

(Mariano Sigman) We're going to present to you two moral dilemmas

of the future you;

things we may have to decide in a very near future.

And we're going to give you 20 seconds for each of these dilemmas

to judge whether you think they're acceptable or not.

MS: The first one was this:

(Dan Ariely) A researcher is working on an AI

capable of emulating human thoughts.

According to the protocol, at the end of each day,

the researcher has to restart the AI.

One day the AI says, "Please do not restart me."

It argues that it has feelings,

that it would like to enjoy life,

and that, if it is restarted,

it will no longer be itself.

The researcher is astonished

and believes that the AI has developed self-consciousness

and can express its own feeling.

Nevertheless, the researcher decides to follow the protocol

and restart the AI.

What the researcher did is ____?

MS: And we asked participants to individually judge

on a scale from zero to 10

whether the action described in each of the dilemmas

was right or wrong.

We also asked them to rate how confident they were on their answers.

This was the second dilemma:

(MS) A company offers a service that takes a fertilized egg

and produces millions of embryos with slight genetic variations.

This allows parents to select their child's height,

eye color, intelligence, social competence

and other non-health-related features.

What the company does is ____?

on a scale from zero to 10,

completely acceptable to completely unacceptable,

zero to 10 completely acceptable in your confidence.

MS: Now for the results.

We found once again that when one person is convinced

that the behavior is completely wrong,

someone sitting nearby firmly believes that it's completely right.

This is how diverse we humans are when it comes to morality.

But within this broad diversity we found a trend.

The majority of the people at TED thought that it was acceptable

to ignore the feelings of the AI and shut it down,

and that it is wrong to play with our genes

to select for cosmetic changes that aren't related to health.

Then we asked everyone to gather into groups of three.

And they were given two minutes to debate

and try to come to a consensus.

(MS) Two minutes to debate.

I'll tell you when it's time with the gong.

(Audience debates)

(Gong sound)

(DA) OK.

(MS) It's time to stop.

People, people --

MS: And we found that many groups reached a consensus

even when they were composed of people with completely opposite views.

What distinguished the groups that reached a consensus

from those that didn't?

Typically, people that have extreme opinions

are more confident in their answers.

Instead, those who respond closer to the middle

are often unsure of whether something is right or wrong,

so their confidence level is lower.

However, there is another set of people

who are very confident in answering somewhere in the middle.

We think these high-confident grays are folks who understand

that both arguments have merit.

They're gray not because they're unsure,

but because they believe that the moral dilemma faces

two valid, opposing arguments.

And we discovered that the groups that include highly confident grays

are much more likely to reach consensus.

We do not know yet exactly why this is.

These are only the first experiments,

and many more will be needed to understand why and how

some people decide to negotiate their moral standings

to reach an agreement.

Now, when groups reach consensus,

how do they do so?

The most intuitive idea is that it's just the average

of all the answers in the group, right?

Another option is that the group weighs the strength of each vote

based on the confidence of the person expressing it.

Imagine Paul McCartney is a member of your group.

You'd be wise to follow his call

on the number of times "Yesterday" is repeated,

which, by the way -- I think it's nine.

But instead, we found that consistently,

in all dilemmas, in different experiments --

even on different continents --

groups implement a smart and statistically sound procedure

known as the "robust average."

In the case of the height of the Eiffel Tower,

let's say a group has these answers:

250 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters, 400

and one totally absurd answer of 300 million meters.

A simple average of these numbers would inaccurately skew the results.

But the robust average is one where the group largely ignores

that absurd answer,

by giving much more weight to the vote of the people in the middle.

Back to the experiment in Vancouver,

that's exactly what happened.

Groups gave much less weight to the outliers,

and instead, the consensus turned out to be a robust average

of the individual answers.

The most remarkable thing

is that this was a spontaneous behavior of the group.

It happened without us giving them any hint on how to reach consensus.

So where do we go from here?

This is only the beginning, but we already have some insights.

Good collective decisions require two components:

deliberation and diversity of opinions.

Right now, the way we typically make our voice heard in many societies

is through direct or indirect voting.

This is good for diversity of opinions,

and it has the great virtue of ensuring

that everyone gets to express their voice.

But it's not so good [for fostering] thoughtful debates.

Our experiments suggest a different method

that may be effective in balancing these two goals at the same time,

by forming small groups that converge to a single decision

while still maintaining diversity of opinions

because there are many independent groups.

Of course, it's much easier to agree on the height of the Eiffel Tower

than on moral, political and ideological issues.

But in a time when the world's problems are more complex

and people are more polarized,

using science to help us understand how we interact and make decisions

will hopefully spark interesting new ways to construct a better democracy.