Event Abstract Back to Event Optimal Group Decision: A Matter of Confidence Calibration Sebastien Massoni1* and Nicolas Roux2 1 Queensland University of Technology, School of Economics and Finance, Australia 2 Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Germany The failure of groups to make optimal decisions is an important topic in human sciences. Recently this issue has been studied in perceptual settings where the problem could be reduced to the question of an optimal integration of multiple signals. The main result of these studies asserts that inefficiencies in group decisions increase with the heterogeneity of its members in terms of performances: groups overweight the recommendations of the least able member. On the contrary, we propose to relate those results to biases in subjects' confidence calibrations. If everyone holds similar beliefs about his performances, the most able subjects tend to be relatively underconfident as compared to the least able subjects. Consequently, a group will put too much weight on the least able member, so that heterogeneity induces greater collective inefficiencies. Thus the collective inefficiencies do not rely on the incapacity of humans to aggregate heterogeneous information but as an inevitable consequence of the lack of information subjects have access to. We perform a perceptual task in which we elicit subjects' choice and confidence at each trial. Each subject of a dyad observes the stimuli in isolation and answer individually. Then the two group members must reach an agreement on both decisions. After the group decision, subjects answer anew to check if they agree with group decision. Feedback is provided. Our results give evidence that predicting the performance of a group is improved by taking into account its members' confidence. First, the heterogeneity of performances has no more impact on the failure of group decisions when we take into account the heterogeneity of confidence calibration. Second, a models comparison gives support to our model based on beliefs rather than the model based on performances heterogeneity. This experiment allows us to emphasize the importance of the metacognitive ability in group decisions and social interactions. Keywords: Calibration, Perception, confidence, Signal detection theory, Group decision Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Cognition and Executive Processes Citation: Massoni S and Roux N (2015). Optimal Group Decision: A Matter of Confidence Calibration. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00245 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Sebastien Massoni, Queensland University of Technology, School of Economics and Finance, Brisbane, Australia, sebastien.massoni@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Sebastien Massoni Nicolas Roux Google Sebastien Massoni Nicolas Roux Google Scholar Sebastien Massoni Nicolas Roux PubMed Sebastien Massoni Nicolas Roux Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.