Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 10: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics I
SOE 10.1: Talk
Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 14:00–14:15, H 0110
The Wisdom of Crowds Effect at Work: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly — Pavlin Marodiev1, Claudio Tessone1, Jan Lorenz1,2, and •Frank Schweitzer1 — 1Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Kreuzplatz 5, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland — 2Center for Social Science Methodolgy, University of Oldenburg, Ammerlander Heerstr. 114 - 118, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
Wisdom of crowds (WoC) refers to the phenomenon that the aggregate prediction of a group of individuals can be surprisingly more accurate than individual estimates. However, as recent experiments with human subjects (PNAS, vol 108, no 22, 2011, pp. 9020-9025) revealed, already a mild social influence can undermine the WoC effect considerably. Specifically, if individuals are allowed to reconsider their estimates after having received either aggregated or full information of the estimates of others, they tend to converge to less accurate results while becoming overconfident of their false improvement. To better understand the conditions under which the WoC effect is likely to fail we provide a model where individuals are represented by Brownian agents which are coupled by information exchange. We demonstrate that the model can reproduce the empirical findings mentioned. We further discuss the impact of initial diversity and accuracy of estimates which directly determine whether social influence can improve or hamper the WoC effect.