Department of Mathematics, <a href="https://ror.org/03r0ha626">University of Utah</a>, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Department of Mathematics, <a href="https://ror.org/05g3dte14">Florida State University</a>, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA.
Phys Rev E. 2024 Aug;110(2-1):024305. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.110.024305.
Decisions are often made by heterogeneous groups of individuals, each with distinct initial biases and access to information of different quality. We show that in groups of independent agents who accumulate evidence the first to decide are those with the strongest initial biases. Their decisions align with their initial bias, regardless of the underlying truth. In contrast, agents who decide last make decisions as if they were initially unbiased and hence make better choices. We obtain asymptotic expressions in the large population limit quantifying how agents' initial inclinations shape early decisions. Our analysis shows how bias, information quality, and decision order interact in nontrivial ways to determine the reliability of decisions in a group.
决策通常由具有不同初始偏见和获取不同质量信息的异质个体群体做出。我们表明，在独立代理人群体中，首先做出决策的是那些具有最强初始偏见的人。他们的决策与其初始偏见一致，而与潜在真相无关。相比之下，最后做出决策的代理则表现得好像他们最初是无偏见的，因此做出了更好的选择。我们在大群体极限中获得了定量描述代理初始倾向如何塑造早期决策的渐近表达式。我们的分析表明，偏见、信息质量和决策顺序如何以复杂的方式相互作用，从而确定群体决策的可靠性。
