Abstract
Studies on inference have shown that people use a variety of inference strategies depending on the situation. Despite a great deal of discussion on the use of these strategies at an individual level, very little research has examined how the strategies people use affect group performance. To address this issue, we conducted two computer simulation studies on group decision-making. Our focus was primarily the diversity of strategies used in groups, as previous studies have suggested that diversity plays a critical role in the wisdom of crowds. Therefore, we systematically manipulated the diversity of inference strategies among group members and examined the effect on group performance. In Study 1, we conducted computer simulations using behavioural data from a previous study and found that diversity of strategies could improve group performance. That is, the group whose members used diverse strategies had higher accuracy than groups where all members used an identical strategy. We also investigated how such a phenomenon emerged. In Study 2, we created multiple hypothetical environmental settings and examined the effect. The environmental settings in Study 1 was limited to the ‘kind’ setting, in which correct inferences could be made for most problems by using a certain strategy, and the results of Study 2 showed that the findings of Study 1 could be generalized to other settings. For example, diversity could improve group performance in the ‘wicked’ environment where an inference strategy tends to lead an individual to the wrong answer. We also identified conditions in which the diversity enhanced group performance in each environment. Finally, for Study 1, we conducted additional simulations and discussed the conditions in which diversity would improve group performance more. The contributions to the research on the wisdom of crowds and human inference are discussed.
Highlights
In the field of judgment and decision making, many studies have examined how individuals make inferences
Honda et al (2017) showed that the subjective difficulty of a problem affects strategy selection: when people feel that a problem is difficult, they tend to rely on simple heuristics, such as the recognition heuristic (Goldstein and Gigerenzer, 2002; Gigerenzer and Brighton, 2009; Brighton and Gigerenzer, 2011; Gigerenzer and Goldstein, 2011), and when they deem a problem easy, they tend to make an inference on the basis of available knowledge (Oppenheimer, 2003; Newell and Shanks, 2004; Hilbig and Richter, 2011)
We assumed that the group members made inferences using one of two strategies: the familiarity heuristic (FA; Honda et al 2011) or subjective knowledge-based inference (SK)
Summary
In the field of judgment and decision making, many studies have examined how individuals make inferences. Despite a great deal of discussion on the use of these strategies at an individual level, only a few previous studies (Reimer and Katsikopoulos, 2004; Kämmer et al, 2014) have examined how such different inference strategies affect decision making at the collective level. Collective decision making, wherein all group members used an identical inference strategy (e.g., the recognition heuristic), was simulated, and the accuracy levels of the strategies were compared. They found that the inference strategy that had the highest accuracy could change depending on whether it was used by an individual or the group. When the group size was large (e.g., 100), the fluency heuristic (FL; Hertwig et al, 2008) showed the highest accuracy, it had the second-lowest accuracy for the inference of an individual
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