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Chapter 4: Making Decisions
This chapter focuses on information transfer in situations where individuals have a number of options to choose between and we can define an end point at which all individuals have made a choice. Most of the examples I consider concern how groups choose a new shelter or migrate to a new home. Here we can sensibly talk about decision-making: when all individuals have settled at their new home or shelter then we can say that a collective decision has been reached. Often in these decision there is a sn benefit for consesus, where all individuals choose the same of the available options. I discuss both the mechanisms through which decisions are reached and why these decision-making mechanisms have evolved. I also look at ideas of 'collective wisdom' and how this can be manifested through very simple interactions. Key ideas covered in this chapter: consensus decsions;cockroach shelter choice; ant and honey bee emigration;U-shaped choice distributions;optimal and evolutionarily stable decisions; theory of many wrongs; Condorcet's theorem; collective wisdom; the central limit theorem; groupthink; integrating many wrongs; quorum responses; fish decisions.
Links Jean-Louis Deneoubourg's homepage
Key references Ame, J. M., J., H., Rivault, C., Detrain, C. & Deneubourg, J. L. 2006 Collegial decision making based on social amplification leads to optimal group formation. PNAS 103, 5835-5840.Link Galton, F. 1907 Vox Populi. Nature (London) 75, 450-451. Surowiecki, J. 2004 The wisdom of crowds: Little, Brown. ----------------------- |
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----------------------------------- Simulations from the book: from the book Box C: Response threshold model Box C: Quorum-based decision-making |