IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0282062.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Casting votes of antecedents play a key role in successful sequential decision-making

Author

Listed:
  • Mariko I Ito
  • Akira Sasaki

Abstract

Aggregation of opinions often results in high decision-making accuracy, owing to the collective intelligence effect. Studies on group decisions have examined the optimum weights for opinion aggregation to maximise accuracy. In addition to the optimum weights of opinions, the impact of the correlation among opinions on collective intelligence is a major issue in collective decision-making. We investigated how individuals should weigh the opinions of others and their own to maximise their accuracy in sequential decision-making. In our sequential decision-making model, each person makes a primary choice, observes his/her predecessors’ opinions, and makes a final choice, which results in the person’s answer correlating with those of others. We developed an algorithm to find casting voters whose primary choices are determinative of their answers and revealed that decision accuracy is maximised by considering only the abilities of the preceding casting voters. We also found that for individuals with heterogeneous abilities, the order of decision-making has a significant impact on the correlation between their answers and their accuracies. This could lead to a counter-intuitive phenomenon whereby, in sequential decision-making, respondents are, on average, more accurate when less reliable individuals answer earlier and more reliable individuals answer later.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariko I Ito & Akira Sasaki, 2023. "Casting votes of antecedents play a key role in successful sequential decision-making," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(2), pages 1-19, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0282062
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282062
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282062&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0282062?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David V. Budescu & Eva Chen, 2015. "Identifying Expertise to Extract the Wisdom of Crowds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(2), pages 267-280, February.
    2. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    3. Lloyd Shapley & Bernard Grofman, 1984. "Optimizing group judgmental accuracy in the presence of interdependencies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 329-343, January.
    4. Gabriel Madirolas & Gonzalo G de Polavieja, 2015. "Improving Collective Estimations Using Resistance to Social Influence," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-16, November.
    5. Nitzan, Shmuel & Paroush, Jacob, 1982. "Optimal Decision Rules in Uncertain Dichotomous Choice Situations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 23(2), pages 289-297, June.
    6. Eyal Baharad & Jacob Goldberger & Moshe Koppel & Shmuel Nitzan, 2012. "Beyond Condorcet: optimal aggregation rules using voting records," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 72(1), pages 113-130, January.
    7. Marie Devaine & Guillaume Hollard & Jean Daunizeau, 2014. "Theory of Mind: Did Evolution Fool Us?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-12, February.
    8. Víctor M Eguíluz & Naoki Masuda & Juan Fernández-Gracia, 2015. "Bayesian Decision Making in Human Collectives with Binary Choices," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, April.
    9. Timothy E. J. Behrens & Laurence T. Hunt & Mark W. Woolrich & Matthew F. S. Rushworth, 2008. "Associative learning of social value," Nature, Nature, vol. 456(7219), pages 245-249, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ben Abramowitz & Nicholas Mattei, 2022. "Towards Group Learning: Distributed Weighting of Experts," Papers 2206.02566, arXiv.org.
    2. Takuya Sekiguchi, 2023. "Voting Records as Assessors of Premises Behind Collective Decisions," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 257-275, April.
    3. Ben Abramowitz & Omer Lev & Nicholas Mattei, 2022. "Who Reviews The Reviewers? A Multi-Level Jury Problem," Papers 2211.08494, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    4. Shmuel Nitzan & Tomoya Tajika, 2022. "Inequality of decision-makers’ power and marginal contribution," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 275-292, March.
    5. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Shmuel Nitzan, 2014. "On the significance of the prior of a correct decision in committees," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(3), pages 317-327, March.
    6. Poindron, Alexis, 2021. "A general model of binary opinions updating," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 52-76.
    7. Xiaohong Yu & Zhaoyang Sun, 2022. "The company they keep: When and why Chinese judges engage in collegiality," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 936-1002, December.
    8. Eyal Baharad & Jacob Goldberger & Moshe Koppel & Shmuel Nitzan, 2012. "Beyond Condorcet: optimal aggregation rules using voting records," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 72(1), pages 113-130, January.
    9. Peng, Diefeng & Rao, Yulei & Sun, Xianming & Xiao, Erte, 2025. "Optional disclosure and observational learning," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    10. Saul Estrin & Susanna Khavul & Mike Wright, 2022. "Soft and hard information in equity crowdfunding: network effects in the digitalization of entrepreneurial finance," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1761-1781, April.
    11. Vincenz Frey & Arnout van de Rijt, 2021. "Social Influence Undermines the Wisdom of the Crowd in Sequential Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4273-4286, July.
    12. Ruth Ben‐Yashar & Miriam Krausz & Shmuel Nitzan, 2018. "Government loan guarantees and the credit decision‐making structure," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 607-625, May.
    13. Mariko I Ito & Hisashi Ohtsuki & Akira Sasaki, 2018. "Emergence of opinion leaders in reference networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-21, March.
    14. Dhillon, Amrita & Kotsialou, Grammateia & Xefteris, Dimitris, 2021. "Information Aggregation with Delegation of Votes," SocArXiv ubk7p, Center for Open Science.
    15. Paul Schure & Francesco Passerelli & David Scoones, 2007. "When the Powerful Drag Their Feet," Department Discussion Papers 0703, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    16. Sven Berg & Antonio Marañon, 2001. "Collective Decisional Skill and Decisive Voting Games - Some Results," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 10(5), pages 389-403, September.
    17. BAHARAD, Eyal & BEN-YASHAR, Ruth & NITZAN, Shmuel, 2018. "Variable Competence and Collective Performance: Unanimity vs. Simple Majority Rule," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-80, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    18. Karotkin, D. & Nitzan, S., 1993. "Some Peculiarities of group Decision Making in Teams," Papers 9303, Tilburg - Center for Economic Research.
    19. Joseph McMurray, 2017. "Ideology as Opinion: A Spatial Model of Common-Value Elections," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 108-140, November.
    20. Christian Ganser & Marc Keuschnigg, 2018. "Social Influence Strengthens Crowd Wisdom Under Voting," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(06n07), pages 1-23, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0282062. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.