"They don't Know Better than I do": People Prefer Seeing for Themselves Over Using the Wisdom of Crowds in Perceptual Decision Making.

Merav Yonah,Yoav Kessler

doi:10.5334/joc.173

Abstract

Establishing the way people decide to use or avoid information when making a decision is of great theoretical and applied interest. In particular, the “big data revolution” enables decision-makers to harness the wisdom of crowds (WoC) toward reaching better decisions. The WoC is a well-documented phenomenon that highlights the potential superiority of collective wisdom over that of an individual. However, individuals may fail to utilize the power of collective wisdom as a means for optimizing decision outcomes. Using a random dot motion task, the present study examined situations in which decision-makers must choose between relying on their personal information or relying on the WoC in their decision. Although the latter was always the reward-maximizing choice, a substantial part of the participants chose to rely on their own observation and also advised others to do so. This choice tendency was associated with higher confidence, but not with better task performance, and hence reflects overconfidence. Acknowledging and understanding this decision bias may help mitigating it in applied settings.

Highlights

Narcissistic tendencies are positively associated with overconfidence (Campbell et al, 2004) which is pertinent to the choice of whether or not to utilize external sources of information in decision making
A majority of 66% (70 out of 106 participants) chose to make their final decision by watching the random dot motion (RDM) display by themselves. Reasons for this choice included “I preferred to judge for myself than to rely on others’ decisions”, “I didn’t always agree with what the majority thought”, “I felt confident in my ability” and “If I’m going to be right or wrong I want it to be because I chose the outcome”
Participants who chose to watch the RDM display were more confident in their decisions than those who chose to see the distribution of group responses

Summary

Introduction

Many studies have demonstrated numerous situations in which aggregated performance is superior to that of individuals. These include quantity estimation (Galton, 1907; Treynor, 1987), problem-solving (Laughlin et al, 2006), and medical diagnostics (Kurvers et al, 2016). The present study employs a scenario where the crowd is always superior to the individual. Focusing on this type of situation, we wish to examine whether individuals are willing to rely on the WoC in their individual decisions and explore the internal and situational correlates of such behavior

Methods

Results

Conclusion