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Complexity Digest 2011.25 - 03
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2011/12/26

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Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups, Science
 









Abstract: 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.
Source: Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups[
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1210280 ], Iain D. Couzin, Christos C.
Ioannou, Güven Demirel, Thilo Gross, Colin J. Torney, Andrew Hartnett, Larissa
Conradt, Simon A. Levin, and Naomi E. Leonard, DOI: 10.1126/science.1210280,
Science Vol. 334 no. 6062 pp. 1578-1580, 2011/12/16

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