Diverse Voices & Collective Decisions

The presence of diverse voices within groups does not necessarily guarantee their integration into collective decisions. We investigate how diverse voices are brought together and potentially improve collective decisions and what cognitive, social, and institutional mechanisms prevent groups from reflecting diverse voices in collective decisions.

Interdisciplinary Understanding of Polarization

We have been collaborating with researchers from the fields of epistemology, political science, and complex systems scientists over the past decade to expand our interdisciplinary understanding of polarization. These collaborations were featured in American Psychologist Special Issue on Multidisciplinary Research Teams (Jung et al., 2019).

Publications

Singer, D. J., Bramson, A., Grim, P., Holman, B., Jung, J., & Berger, W. J. (2021). Epistemic networks and polarization. In M. Hannon & J. de Ridder (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology, (pp. 133‒144). New York, NY: Routledge.
Jung, J., Grim, P., Singer, D. J., Bramson, A., Berger, W. J., Holman, B., & Kovaka, K. (2019). A multidisciplinary understanding of polarization. American Psychologist, 74, 301‒314.

Recency Bias in Group Deliberation

Memory limits and biased forgetting can prevent groups from reflecting diverse voices in collective decisions. Decision-makers tend to weigh more on recently expressed voices in our empirical jury deliberation experiment (Kerr & Jung, 2018). Agent-based simulation experiments revealed that the effect of recency bias on collective decisions persists even when agents are completely rational and open-minded; however, can be mitigated with unlimited memory (e.g., machine intelligence) (Singer et al., 2019; 2021).

Publications

Singer, D. J., Bramson, A., Grim, P., Holman, B., Kovaka, K., Jung, J., & Berger, W. J. (2021). Don’t forget forgetting: The social epistemic importance of how we forget. Synthese, 198, 5373–5394.
Singer, D. J. Bramson, A. Grim, P., Holman, B., Jung, J., Kovaka K, Ranginani, A., & Berger, W. J. (2019). Rational social and political polarization. Philosophical Studies, 176, 2243–2267.
Kerr, N. & Jung, J. (2018). Should jurors be allowed to discuss trial evidence before deliberation?: New research evidence. Law and Human Behavior, 42, 413‒426.

Reinforcement Schedules of Social Influence

A unique combination of social influence sources can produce consensus or polarization. Well moderated group deliberations (e.g., town hall meetings) can bring diverse voices into group consensus in a moderate stance. However, word-of-mouth and self-selected media influence polarize the public, preventing society from reaching a consensus (Pulick, Korth, Grim, & Jung, 2016).

Publications

Pulick, E., Korth, P., Grim, P., & Jung, J. (2016). Modeling interaction effects in polarization: Individual media influence and the impact of town meetings. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 19 (2) 1.

Types of Democracy & Collective Decisions

Representative democracy doesn’t bring people’s voices into national decisions as accurately as direct democracy because representatives are few, and their stances do not cover the diverse stances represented in public; however, our research suggests that deliberation among representatives can mend the bias of representative democracy (Grim et al., 2020; Berger et al., 2022).

Publications

Berger, W. J., Singer, D. J., Bramson, A., Grim, P., Jung, J., & Holman, B. (2022). Philosophical considerations of political polarization. In d. Bordonaba, F. Castrom, & R. Vidal (Eds.), The Political Turn in Analytic Philosophy: Reflections on Social Injustice and Oppressions (pp. 279-298). Boston: De Gruyter.
Grim, P., Singer, D. J., Bramson, A., Berger, W. J., Jung, J., & Page, S. (2020). Representation in models of epistemic democracy. Episteme, 17, 498–518.

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