Bringing Leaders of Network Sub-Groups Closer Together Does Not Facilitate Consensus
Matthew I. Jones, Nicholas A. Christakis

TL;DR
This study investigates how leader positioning and noisy information affect consensus in networked groups, finding noise hampers consensus and leadership influences behavior, but leader proximity does not significantly impact consensus formation.
Contribution
The paper provides empirical evidence that leader proximity in networks does not significantly influence consensus, highlighting the dominant role of noise and leadership behavior.
Findings
Noise reduces likelihood of consensus
Longer consensus times under noise
Leader proximity does not significantly affect consensus
Abstract
Consensus formation is a complex process, particularly in networked groups. When individuals are incentivized to dig in and refuse to compromise, leaders may be essential to guiding the group to consensus. Specifically, the relative geodesic position of leaders (which we use as a proxy for ease of communication between leaders) could be important for reaching consensus. Additionally, groups searching for consensus can be confounded by noisy signals in which individuals are given false information about the actions of their fellow group members. We tested the effects of the geodesic distance between leaders (geodesic distance ranging from 1-4) and of noise (noise levels at 0%, 5%, and 10%) by recruiting participants (N=3,456) for a set of experiments (n=216 groups). We find that noise makes groups less likely to reach consensus, and the groups that do reach consensus take longer to find…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCognitive Science and Mapping
