ArticlePLoS computational biology2022
Avoiding costly mistakes in groups: The evolution of error management in collective decision making.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- A mechanistic understanding of collective escape in starling flocks.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Does the risk-taking behaviour of a group influence individual risk-taking behaviour?Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Individual differences in speed-accuracy trade-off influence social decision-making in dyads.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Moderate confirmation bias enhances decision-making in groups of reinforcement-learning agents.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Fast decisions reflect biases; slow decisions do not.Physical review. E · 2024Article
- Visual social information use in collective foraging.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- A Cognitive Computational Approach to Social and Collective Decision-Making.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Article
- Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Review
- The social transmission of stress in animal collectives.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Individuals continuously have to balance the error costs of alternative decisions. A wealth of research has studied how single individuals navigate this, showing that individuals develop response biases to avoid the more costly error. We, however, know little about the dynamics in groups facing asymmetrical error costs and when social influence amplifies either safe or risky behavior. Here, we investigate this by modeling the decision process and information flow with a drift-diffusion model extended to the social domain. In the model individuals first gather independent personal information; they then enter a social phase in which they can either decide early based on personal information, or wait for additional social information. We combined the model with an evolutionary algorithm to derive adaptive behavior. We find that under asymmetric costs, individuals in large cooperative groups do not develop response biases because such biases amplify at the collective level, triggering false information cascades. Selfish individuals, however, undermine the group's performance for their own benefit by developing higher response biases and waiting for more information. Our results have implications for our understanding of the social dynamics in groups facing asymmetrical errors costs, such as animal groups evading predation or police officers holding a suspect at gunpoint.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.