Multi-Agent Consensus as a Cognitive Bias Trigger in Human-AI Interaction

TL;DR

This study investigates how multi-agent AI systems influence human judgment through social dynamics, revealing that consensus structures can trigger cognitive biases and affect confidence and decision-making.

Contribution

The paper provides empirical evidence that agent agreement structures act as bias signals in human-AI interactions, highlighting their impact on judgment and confidence.

Findings

Majority consensus accelerates opinion change and inflates confidence.

Minority dissent promotes deliberative engagement and slows opinion change.

Interpretive trajectories are shaped by perceptions of agent independence and group dynamics.

Abstract

As multi-agent AI systems become more common, users increasingly encounter not a single AI voice but a collective one. This shift introduces social dynamics, such as consensus, dissent, and gradual convergence, that can trigger cognitive biases and distort human judgment. We present findings from a controlled experiment (N = 127) comparing three multi-agent configurations: Majority, Minority, and Diffusion. Quantitative results show that majority consensus accelerates opinion change and inflates confidence, consistent with social proof and bandwagon heuristics. Minority dissent slows this process and promotes more deliberative engagement. Qualitative analysis identifies three interpretive trajectories: reinforcing, aligning, and oscillating, shaped by how users interpret agent independence and group dynamics over time. These findings suggest that agent agreement structure, independent of content, functions as a bias-relevant signal in LLM interactions. We hope this work contributes to the Bias4Trust agenda by grounding multi-agent social influence as a concrete and designable source of bias in human-AI interaction.