The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions

Reid Hastie, Tatsuya Kameda
2005 Psychological review  
How should groups make decisions? The authors provide an original evaluation of 9 group decision rules based on their adaptive success in a simulated test bed environment. When the adaptive success standard is applied, the majority and plurality rules fare quite well, performing at levels comparable to much more resource-demanding rules such as an individual judgment averaging rule. The plurality rule matches the computationally demanding Condorcet majority winner that is standard in
more » ... of preferential choice. The authors also test the results from their theoretical analysis in a behavioral study of nominal human group decisions, and the essential findings are confirmed empirically. The conclusions of the present analysis support the popularity of majority and plurality rules in truth-seeking group decisions.
doi:10.1037/0033-295x.112.2.494 pmid:15783295 fatcat:c452ub6mlbc2hbhrx6n6e2f2fa