Avoiding costly mistakes in groups: The evolution of error management in collective decision making

by Alan Novaes Tump, Max Wolf, Pawel Romanczuk, Ralf H. J. M. Kurvers

Individuals continuously have to balance the error costs of alternative decisions. A wealth of research has studied how single individuals navigate this, showing that individuals develop response biases to avoid the more costly error. We, however, know little about the dynamics in groups facing asymmetrical error costs and when social influence amplifies either safe or risky behavior. Here, we investigate this by modeling the decision process and information flow with a drift–diffusion model extended to the social domain. In the model individuals first gather independent personal information; they then enter a social phase in which they can either decide early based on personal information, or wait for additional social information. We combined the model with an evolutionary algorithm to derive adaptive behavior. We find that under asymmetric costs, individuals in large cooperative groups do not develop response biases because such biases amplify at the collective level, triggering false information cascades. Selfish individuals, however, undermine the group’s performance for their own benefit by developing higher response biases and waiting for more information. Our results have implications for our understanding of the social dynamics in groups facing asymmetrical errors costs, such as animal groups evading predation or police officers holding a suspect at gunpoint.