How Can Groups Make Good Decisions? Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely (2017)

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

Mariano closes this talk with the following at 07:32 . You can read the transcript below.

Partial Transcript

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.

Paper

•  Wisdom of Crowds of Crowds Crowds within a crowd outperform 'wisdom of the crowd'