Managing and aggregating group evidence under quality and quantity trade-offs

Abstract

Trade-offs between quality and quantity arise in an abundance of contexts concerning group decision making. With the starting point being that group members provide more accurate evidence when they are involved with fewer tasks, team managers often encounter the following dilemma: Should they assign their group members with many tasks (attempting to gather more evidence with lower quality), or with fewer tasks (aiming at receiving less, but more high-quality evidence)? Secondly, what is the optimal way to aggregate the collected evidence from a group, which may be contrasting and varying in accuracy? Should more weight be given to the more accurate group members, or to the larger number of those who provide the same answer? This topic is already studied within the mathematical framework of Terzopoulou and Endriss (2019). In this paper we complement it experimentally, by investigating to what extent people's decision-making patterns are in accordance with the optimal ones proposed by the normative model. Our findings suggest that people understand the task at hand and generally opt for optimal choices, especially in conflict-free cases. Still, a tendency towards overvaluing the importance of additional evidence, despite their accuracy, is observed; this translates into choosing options that align with the majority rule in aggregation problems.