Rationality and Society James S Coleman Outstanding Article Award

Teams, juries, electorates, and committees must often choose from various alternatives what they judge to be the best option. Condorcet’s famous jury theorem tells us that group decisions based on plurality voting (or relative majority) can be surprisingly wise. Results from a laboratory experiment reveal that when subjects sequentially state which of two answers they deem correct, knowledge of what others stated before backfires, undermining the wisdom of the crowd.

Professor of Political and Social Sciences, Arnout van de Rijt receives the Rationality and Society James S. Coleman Outstanding Article Award for his article on Social Influence Undermines the Wisdom of the Crowd in Sequential Decision Making.