Yonah Merav, Kessler Yoav
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, 8410501, Israel.
J Cogn. 2021 Jun 21;4(1):30. doi: 10.5334/joc.173.
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.
确定人们在做决策时决定使用或回避信息的方式具有重大的理论和应用价值。特别是，“大数据革命”使决策者能够利用群体智慧（WoC）做出更好的决策。群体智慧是一个有充分文献记载的现象，它突出了集体智慧相对于个人智慧的潜在优势。然而，个体可能无法将集体智慧的力量作为优化决策结果的手段。本研究通过一个随机点运动任务，考察了决策者在决策时必须在依靠个人信息还是依靠群体智慧之间做出选择的情况。尽管后者始终是奖励最大化的选择，但相当一部分参与者选择依靠自己的观察，并建议他人也这样做。这种选择倾向与更高的自信相关，但与更好的任务表现无关，因此反映了过度自信。认识并理解这种决策偏差可能有助于在应用场景中减轻它。
