Avoiding costly mistakes in groups: The evolution of error management in collective decision making

Individuals continuously have to balance the error costs of alternative decisions. A wealth of research has studied how single individuals navigate this, showing that individuals develop response biases to avoid the more costly error. We, however, know little about the dynamics in groups facing asymmetrical error costs and when social influence amplifies either safe or risky behavior. Here, we investigate this by modeling the decision process and information flow with a drift–diffusion model extended to the social domain. In the model individuals first gather independent personal information; they then enter a social phase in which they can either decide early based on personal information, or wait for additional social information. We combined the model with an evolutionary algorithm to derive adaptive behavior. We find that under asymmetric costs, individuals in large cooperative groups do not develop response biases because such biases amplify at the collective level, triggering false information cascades. Selfish individuals, however, undermine the group’s performance for their own benefit by developing higher response biases and waiting for more information. Our results have implications for our understanding of the social dynamics in groups facing asymmetrical errors costs, such as animal groups evading predation or police officers holding a suspect at gunpoint

Time pressure reduces misinformation discrimination ability but does not alter response bias

Abstract Many parts of our social lives are speeding up, a process known as social acceleration. How social acceleration impacts people’s ability to judge the veracity of online news, and ultimately the spread of misinformation, is largely unknown. We examined the effects of accelerated online dynamics, operationalised as time pressure, on online misinformation evaluation. Participants judged the veracity of true and false news headlines with or without time pressure. We used signal detection theory to disentangle the effects of time pressure on discrimination ability and response bias, as well as on four key determinants of misinformation susceptibility: analytical thinking, ideological congruency, motivated reflection, and familiarity. Time pressure reduced participants’ ability to accurately distinguish true from false news (discrimination ability) but did not alter their tendency to classify an item as true or false (response bias). Key drivers of misinformation susceptibility, such as ideological congruency and familiarity, remained influential under time pressure. Our results highlight the dangers of social acceleration online: People are less able to accurately judge the veracity of news online, while prominent drivers of misinformation susceptibility remain present. Interventions aimed at increasing deliberation may thus be fruitful avenues to combat online misinformation

A computed tomographic evaluation of change in bone volume after secondary bone grafting over the first postoperative year

The result of secondary alveolar bone grafting has been evaluated in many ways. 1–3 When there is only the need to see a bony bridging of the cleft several months after operation the evaluation method can be simple. 1 In these cases, conventional dental radiography will be sufficient to visualize the cleft area. Bergland et al. 2 and Enemark et al. 3 used conventional dental radiographs to make a quantitative analysis of the remaining bone graft in the cleft to measure the rate of success which was determined by the coverage of the root of both teeth adjacent to the cleft. The use of computed tomographic scans increased the amount of information about the cleft area and so became more widely used for this purpose. 4–8 Several methods of quantitative measurement have been described. Besides the evaluation of the transplanted bone, computed tomographic scans can be used for imaging the position of the cuspid, the position of other teeth in the cleft area, to visualize asymmetries of the face resulting from clefts, and for planning implants if necessary. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether there was resorption of the bone graft and to determine what would happen to the bone volume of the cleft area after the secondary bone grafting