Chapter 1: What unexpected factor can speed up group decision-making?
Prepare to have your mind blown as we delve into the complexities of relationships, explore the cutting edge of science, and celebrate the bizarre and beautiful absurdity of the world around us. This is The Last Show with David Cooper. You're in a group argument. It's heated. And when that happens, we usually try to win people over.
But a new study suggests the fastest path to a group decision might be something a little unexpected.
Chapter 2: What does a professor of mathematical biology do?
Getting a few people to go full Switzerland and stay neutral in the argument. Let's break this all down with Professor of Mathematical Biology and Public Engagement at the University of Math, Kit Yates. Kit, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on.
When I first saw your academic title, Professor of Mathematical Biology and Public Engagement, what does that mean? What does a professor of mathematical biology and public engagement do on the day to day?
So yeah, in mathematical biology, we're taking real biological systems that people are interested in, from the swarming of locusts to the development of embryos to the way that cats get their pigmentation patterns. I work on all three of those areas.
Chapter 3: How do locusts demonstrate the importance of neutrality?
And we try to build a mathematical model. So that might be some computer code or an equation that we write down, and we try to predict what's going to happen in those systems.
So that we can understand them better and do sort of in silica, what we call in silica experiments, so experiments in the computer or mathematical experiments where our collaborators who work with the real system actually just can't do that experiment because it's unfeasible or it's too big or it's too difficult to do.
Your professor title went from just seeming weird and confusing to me to now sounding like the coolest job in the world. But let's get to this study. Group decision making. I'm imagining like a tug of war, basically. Two sides pulling harder and harder with each other. Is that the best way for a group decision to be made when two groups within the group, subgroups, am I using the math term right?
Sure. Subsets, when they can't get along, like is that the best way to go forward?
So I think what we've discovered in this new study is that actually allowing people to be neutral. So in the case of like a vote, allowing people to abstain from the vote actually can help a group to form a consensus decision more quickly. And we've tried this out in a couple of different systems.
So one of them is in a locust experiment where we see locusts marching around in a ring shaped arena. and they go round and round together in one direction, and then they sort of suddenly spontaneously switch.
And for years, people thought, well, it was just left-moving or clockwise-moving locusts butting heads with anti-clockwise-moving locusts and just convincing them to come the other way with them. But actually, what we saw when we looked at the locusts more carefully was that
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Chapter 4: What findings emerged from the locust experiment on decision-making?
some of these locusts just stop. They butt into someone and then they stop. They don't immediately turn and they become effectively neutral.
And so you go through this, when you're switching from one direction to the other, you go through this high neutrality event where you have lots of locusts who are just stopped waiting for the others to sort of battle it out with each other and make up their mind. And that allows them to form consensus more quickly when consensus is the important thing.
So it works on a locus level. Does it work on a group of people level? Does it work on a country level? Like if there's a war and then there's a country that's neutral? Do you see this pattern popping up everywhere?
Well, we never got quite as far as the country level, but we did do some human-based experiments. So we recruited people to play a game, if you like. It was a voting game. They had two possibilities of either voting for option A or option B. I vote A.
Chapter 5: How does neutrality affect consensus in human decision-making?
Yeah, well, you're good then, you're fine. Well, you might lose out there, right? So there's a reward system going on. But also people are allowed to abstain. So if you wanted to take part in the vote each round, we did sequential rounds of voting. If you want to take part in the vote, it would cost you 100 points.
But if you voted with the consensus, with what most other people in the group were doing, you got 150 points back. So you could gain 50 points overall. Or, you could be neutral, and that wouldn't cost you anything. So what we said to the people was, if you vote with the consensus the most times, you get a monetary reward.
Chapter 6: What role do abstainers play in group decisions?
So there was an incentive for voting with the consensus. And after each round, we would show people a sample of the votes of people in the previous round. So they knew sort of what was going on, what might inform them being able to vote with the consensus. And what we found was that if we allowed them to abstain, then they would switch consensus more quickly.
They would find a consensus, a decision more quickly. But if we didn't allow them to abstain, we removed that option. But it took them much longer to form consensus and to change consensus.
And is this what's happening with the locusts? A bunch of them, when the swarm, there's some indecision about direction, they just stop and wait and observe and then vote and then they change direction? Like, is that how it all works?
Yeah, with the locusts, it is like that.
Chapter 7: How can neutrality help resolve polarized arguments?
Yeah, they're stopping and then they're allowing the decision to be made by a smaller group and then they're sort of following what happens. I think... Typically, you can think of two different decision routes. One is like this familiar route where you try and persuade maybe like floating voters, people who are undecided. You try to get them to join your side.
But actually, the mechanism that we found more effective for switching consensus in this mathematical model we built was that actually you try and go to someone who has the opposite opinion to you, but instead of trying to convince them to come whole hog onto your side, you try and say to them, be a bit more open. Why don't you take a neutral stance about this?
And that allows you to switch consensus more quickly. And I think this has ramifications when we're thinking about things like anti-vaxxers, right? There's this temptation to just be like, just take a vaccine because they work. The science says so, but actually... What's better is to say, actually, step back from the extreme decision.
Chapter 8: What is the key takeaway regarding decision-making and neutrality?
And I'll step back from my position as well. And then let's just, we're open, and let's then evaluate the evidence from there. Let's be neutral, and then let's go from there and be open to these new ideas. That's the idea.
Did you just use math to solve the kind of crisis that's going on with two polarized political sides in the world not getting along and not seeing eye to eye? Is that what just happened?
Yeah, I'm not saying that we've solved these problems, right? But there's definitely something in it where we, instead of just butting heads and like fighting with each other and saying, you've got to see it my way, you've got to see it my way.
Instead, if we encourage each other to have a more open mind and to forget our sort of previous biases so much and to come at things more openly with this, and that's what neutrality means in this context. then I think there's the potential that we might find a more harmonious solution.
It might not come down on one side or the other that you prefer, but it maybe allows us to make a consensus decision more quickly.
Now, in modern life, I think a lot of people complain about those who don't make a decision. You know, people who sit on the fence, there's stereotypes around it. There's language. You might yell at a friend, pick a lane, phrasing like that.
But I guess your work suggests that people who do sit on the fence might be doing something kind of socially useful in a conflict or in a situation where two groups can't agree on something.
Exactly that. And I agree with you. We're always trying to recruit people to one side of the argument and the other to choose, be passionate about something.
But sometimes I think this study is suggesting that there's something to be said for people who are being neutral, who are thoughtful, are taking their time about making a decision, who are appearing not to actively take part in the decision-making process. I think that there's absolutely a role for those people. And actually, maybe if more of us were like that and perhaps less polarized,
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