Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Science. 2011 Dec 16;334(6062):1578-80. doi: 10.1126/science.1210280.
Conflicting interests among group members are common when making collective decisions, yet failure to achieve consensus can be costly. Under these circumstances individuals may be susceptible to manipulation by a strongly opinionated, or extremist, minority. It has previously been argued, for humans and animals, that social groups containing individuals who are uninformed, or exhibit weak preferences, are particularly vulnerable to such manipulative agents. Here, we use theory and experiment to demonstrate that, for a wide range of conditions, a strongly opinionated minority can dictate group choice, but the presence of uninformed individuals spontaneously inhibits this process, returning control to the numerical majority. Our results emphasize the role of uninformed individuals in achieving democratic consensus amid internal group conflict and informational constraints.
当做出集体决策时，小组成员之间的利益冲突很常见，但无法达成共识可能会付出代价。在这种情况下，个人可能容易受到强烈意见或极端主义少数派的操纵。以前有人认为，对于人类和动物来说，群体中包含不知情或表现出较弱偏好的个体的社会群体特别容易受到这种操纵剂的影响。在这里，我们使用理论和实验证明，在广泛的条件下，一个强烈意见的少数派可以支配群体的选择，但不知情个体的存在会自发地抑制这一过程，将控制权交还给多数派。我们的研究结果强调了在内部群体冲突和信息限制下，不知情个体在达成民主共识方面的作用。
