Authors
Sergey Gavrilets, Jeremy Auerbach, Mark Van Vugt
Publication date
2016/7/14
Journal
Scientific Reports
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
29704
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Description
When group cohesion is essential, groups must have efficient strategies in place for consensus decision-making. Recent theoretical work suggests that shared decision-making is often the most efficient way for dealing with both information uncertainty and individual variation in preferences. However, some animal and most human groups make collective decisions through particular individuals, leaders, that have a disproportionate influence on group decision-making. To address this discrepancy between theory and data, we study a simple, but general, model that explicitly focuses on the dynamics of consensus building in groups composed by individuals who are heterogeneous in preferences, certain personality traits (agreeability and persuasiveness), reputation and social networks. We show that within-group heterogeneity can significantly delay democratic consensus building as well as give rise to the …
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