Therefore, a simple averaging of the revised (post-influence) estimates is not the same as simply averaging the initial (pre-influence) estimates. However, social influence processes, in which people exchange information about their estimates, can cause individuals to revise their judgment in estimation tasks 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Conventional statistical accounts of the wisdom of crowds rely on the following two assumptions: (i) the individual errors are uncorrelated or negatively correlated 7, and (ii) the individuals are unbiased that is, they are correct in mean expectations 2. Recent applications of this concept include technological, political, and economic forecasting 3 performance evaluations 4 preference elicitation 5 and public policy design 6. In its classical definition, the concept of “the wisdom of crowds” refers to the idea that the aggregate estimate of a group of individuals can be superior to that of individual, credentialed experts 1, 2. By adopting a framework that integrates both the structure of the social influence and the distribution of the initial estimates, we bring previously conflicting results under one theoretical framework and clarify the effects of social influence on the wisdom of crowds. Using theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and reanalysis of four experimental datasets (totaling 2885 human subjects), we find that the wisdom of crowds critically depends on the interaction between (i) the centralization of the social influence network and (ii) the distribution of the initial individual estimates.

Here, we demonstrate that it is not enough to consider the network structure in isolation.

Much of this work has focused on the role of social influence in promoting the wisdom of the crowd versus leading the crowd astray and has resulted in conflicting conclusions about how social network structure determines the impact of social influence. Whether, and under what conditions, groups exhibit “crowd wisdom” has been a major focus of research across the social and computational sciences.

State of decay 2 influence trainer