As the saying goes, two heads are better than one, and there is wisdom in a crowd.<\/p>\n
The idea that people as a whole are better decision makers than any individual is not new; indeed, the Western jury system is based on this principle.<\/p>\n
For a long time, it was believed that the more opinions taken into account, the better the result \u2013 the group's final answer usually fell somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n
However, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Communications<\/em> and conducted by neurobiologist Federico Barrera-Lemarchand of the University of Torcuato di Tella in Argentina, the truth may be more complex \u2013 and interesting.<\/p>\n Researchers found that groups perform best not by simply combining their initial guesses. Instead, they become more accurate when they solve a problem collaboratively, breaking it down into smaller pieces, and then reassembling them to arrive at a new answer.<\/p>\n Researchers call this reasoning strategy Fermi crowdsourcing.<\/p>\n The "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon is more common than you might think. It's observed everywhere: from geopolitical forecasting and financial markets to medical diagnostics. Given its widespread use and importance, researchers have long sought to understand why it works\u2014and why it sometimes doesn't.<\/p>\n However, research findings are not always consistent. Some have shown that social interaction can actually worsen grades, as people begin to follow each other instead of thinking independently.<\/p>\n On the other hand, averaging consensus estimates from small groups invariably yields better results than averaging independent estimates from much larger groups. So when does group consensus undermine collective accuracy, and when does it actually enhance it?<\/p>\n One important question concerns what actually happens during a successful discussion. Do groups simply pool everyone's initial assumptions, or do they logically arrive at an entirely new answer? This is precisely what a new study sought to test.<\/p>\n The researchers hypothesized that groups achieve greater accuracy when they collectively break down complex problems into smaller, simpler ones\u2014a strategy known as the Fermi method\u2014rather than simply averaging everyone's initial estimates.<\/p>\n They wanted to find out whether a collaborative approach was the key to making better group decisions.<\/p>\n A total of 900 people were recruited across three experiments examining how small groups reach consensus.<\/p>\n In the first experiment, small groups of four people split into chat rooms to try to find answers to number estimation questions requiring general knowledge. They were given no instructions on how to do this.<\/p>\n The researchers then analyzed the conversations that took place within each group and compared them with the results obtained.<\/p>\n Groups that naturally broke questions down into smaller parts and analyzed them together ultimately produced more accurate answers than groups that primarily shared their initial guesses. And it wasn't because one smart person dominated the discussion\u2014participation was roughly equal.<\/p>\n In the second experiment, the researchers wanted to see if this strategy could be taught.<\/p>\n The groups were divided into two parts. One group was instructed to share their initial estimates and combine them to create an average.<\/p>\n Another group was instructed to break the problem down into smaller parts, estimate those smaller parts, and then combine those estimates into an answer.<\/p>\n The second set of tests consistently produced more accurate answers.<\/p>\n Successful groups broke problems down into small, easily solvable parts. (Barrera-Lemarchand et al., Nat. Commun.<\/em> , 2026)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Finally, in the third experiment, all participants were asked to use the Fermi method, but half of the participants worked alone and the rest in groups.<\/p>\n Individual participants' scores did improve after using this method\u2026 but group scores were still more accurate. This suggests that sharing and verifying each other's assessments in a group setting provides something that individuals working alone cannot.<\/p>\n And here's where things get interesting. Researchers analyzed the language used in conversations and found that the most successful groups tended to discuss concepts that were more closely related to the problem they were trying to solve.<\/p>\n For example, when discussing the number of steps in a monument, more successful teams may use language such as "stairs," "building," and "floors," indicating that they are breaking the problem down into smaller, more manageable pieces before arriving at a rough estimate.<\/p>\n See also:<\/strong> You're not indecisive, you're impartial. Science says so.<\/strong><\/p>\n The researchers caution that they only tested numerical estimation tasks, so it remains to be seen whether the same strategy would improve other types of group decisions.<\/p>\n However, the findings suggest that so-called "problem decomposition" offers a more effective and easily digestible route to group decision making and may be of value wherever groups are asked to solve complex problems together.<\/p>\n \u00ab"This work demonstrates that collective reasoning, and in particular approximation reasoning, underlies the improvement of collective accuracy in deliberation and offers tools for identifying and enhancing such processes, contributing to a basic understanding of decision making in human groups and informing practical applications aimed at improving crowdsourcing strategies," they write in their paper.<\/p>\n The results of the study were published in journal Nature Communications<\/em> .<\/p>\n ScienceAlert articles are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans; they are never generated by artificial intelligence. Don't miss a single article; subscribe here.<\/p>\n The opposite of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu exists, and it's even stranger.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Researchers explain that "barbarians" have been misunderstood for centuries.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Your DNA isn't just a double helix. Scientists just discovered what it's hiding.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the saying goes, two heads are better than one, and there's wisdom in a crowd. The idea that people as a whole are better decision makers than any individual\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","hvn-theme-has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161797,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294\/revisions\/161797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Related news<\/h3>\n
\n