How social information can improve estimation accuracy in human groups.

ABSTRACT: In our digital and connected societies, the development of social networks, online shopping, and reputation systems raises the questions of how individuals use social information and how it affects their decisions. We report experiments performed in France and Japan, in which subjects could update their estimates after having received information from other subjects. We measure and model the impact of this social information at individual and collective scales. We observe and justify that, when individuals have little prior knowledge about a quantity, the distribution of the logarithm of their estimates is close to a Cauchy distribution. We find that social influence helps the group improve its properly defined collective accuracy. We quantify the improvement of the group estimation when a

SUBMITTER: Jayles B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5703270 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature