Performance of human groups in social foraging: the role of communication in consensus decision making

King, Andrew J.; Narraway, Claire; Hodgson, Lindsay; Weatherill, Aidan; Sommer, Volker; Sumner, Seirian

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2010.0808

Cited by 27 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In many previous studies on CC in humans, information is aggregated computationally by the experimenter, post-hoc [24-26] but see 27. Here we obtained independent information from the study subjects, who were then allowed to communicate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective Cognition in Humans: Groups Outperform Their Best Members in a Sentence Reconstruction Task

et al. 2013

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Group-living is widespread among animals and one of the major advantages of group-living is the ability of groups to solve cognitive problems that exceed individual ability. Humans also make use of collective cognition and have simultaneously developed a highly complex language to exchange information. Here we investigated collective cognition of human groups regarding language use in a realistic situation. Individuals listened to a public announcement and had to reconstruct the sentence alone or in groups. This situation is often encountered by humans, for instance at train stations or airports. Using recent developments in machine speech recognition, we analysed how well individuals and groups reconstructed the sentences from a syntactic (i.e., the number of errors) and semantic (i.e., the quality of the retrieved information) perspective. We show that groups perform better both on a syntactic and semantic level than even their best members. Groups made fewer errors and were able to retrieve more information when reconstructing the sentences, outcompeting even their best group members. Our study takes collective cognition studies to the more complex level of language use in humans.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective Cognition in Humans: Groups Outperform Their Best Members in a Sentence Reconstruction Task

et al. 2013

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“…Communicating human groups perform better during social foraging experiments than non-communicating groups [5]. Individuals may use inadvertent social information such as age [6,7] or speed [8] to identify the more performant individuals and follow them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural influence of social information use in pedestrian road-crossing behaviours

Péle¹,

Bellut

Debergue

et al. 2017

R. Soc. open sci.

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Social information use is common in a wide range of group-living animals, notably in humans. The role it plays in decision-making could be a key to understanding how social groups make collective decisions. The observation of road-crossing behaviours in the presence of other individuals is an ideal means to study the influence of social information on decision-making. This study investigated the influence of culture on social information used by pedestrians in a potentially dangerous scenario, namely road crossing. We scored the collective crossing of pedestrians at four locations in Nagoya (Japan) and three locations in Strasbourg (France). French pedestrians cross against the lights much more often (41.9%) than Japanese ones (2.1%). Individuals deciding to cross the road were strongly influenced by the behaviour and the presence of other pedestrians, especially in Japan, where a stronger conformism was noted. However, Japanese pedestrians were half as likely to be influenced by social information as their French counterparts when crossing at the red light, as they were more respectful of rules. Men show riskier behaviour than women (40.6% versus 25.7% of rule-breaking, respectively), deciding quickly and setting off earlier than women. Further related studies could help target specific preventive, culture-specific solutions for pedestrian safety.

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“…Many of the benefits, such as shared vigilance or predator confusion, are related to reduced per capita predation risk, whereas increased intra-group feeding competition represents one of the unavoidable main costs of group-living [1]–[3]. Cohesion is a prerequisite for reaping the major benefits of group-living, and consensus decisions enable group members to achieve cohesion by coordinating their activities and travel schedules [4]–[6]. However, joint decision-making can be hampered by diverging individual needs due to differences in sex, age, motivation as well as reproductive and physiological state among group members [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants and Outcomes of Decision-Making, Group Coordination and Social Interactions during a Foraging Experiment in a Wild Primate

et al. 2013

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Social animals have to coordinate joint movements to maintain group cohesion, but the latter is often compromised by diverging individual interests. A widespread behavioral mechanism to achieve coordination relies on shared or unshared consensus decision-making. If consensus costs are high, group fission represents an alternative tactic. Exploring determinants and outcomes of spontaneous group decisions and coordination of free-ranging animals is methodologically challenging. We therefore conducted a foraging experiment with a group of wild redfronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons) to study decision outcomes, coordination of movements, individual foraging benefits and social interactions in response to the presentation of drinking platforms with varying baiting patterns. Behavioral observations were complemented with data from recordings of motion detector cameras installed at the platforms. The animal's behavior in the experimental conditions was compared to natural group movements. We could not determine the type of consensus decision-making because the group visited platforms randomly. The group fissioned during 23.3% of platform visits, and fissioning resulted in more individuals drinking simultaneously. As under natural conditions, adult females initiated most group movements, but overtaking by individuals of different age and sex classes occurred in 67% of movements to platforms, compared to only 18% during other movements. As a result, individual resource intake at the platforms did not depend on departure position, age or sex, but on arrival order. Aggression at the platforms did not affect resource intake, presumably due to low supplanting rates. Our findings highlight the diversity of coordination processes and related consequences for individual foraging benefits in a primate group living under natural conditions.

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Performance of human groups in social foraging: the role of communication in consensus decision making

Cited by 27 publications

References 12 publications

Collective Cognition in Humans: Groups Outperform Their Best Members in a Sentence Reconstruction Task

Collective Cognition in Humans: Groups Outperform Their Best Members in a Sentence Reconstruction Task

Cultural influence of social information use in pedestrian road-crossing behaviours

Determinants and Outcomes of Decision-Making, Group Coordination and Social Interactions during a Foraging Experiment in a Wild Primate

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