Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Convergence To Consensus In Heterogeneous Groups And The Emergence Of Informal Leadership, Sergey Gavrilets, Jeremy David Auerbach, Mark Van Vugt
Convergence To Consensus In Heterogeneous Groups And The Emergence Of Informal Leadership, Sergey Gavrilets, Jeremy David Auerbach, Mark Van Vugt
Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
When group cohesion is essential, groups must have efficient strategies in place for consensus decisionmaking. Recent theoretical work suggests that shared decision-making is often the most efficient way for dealing with both information uncertainty and individual variation in preferences. However, some animal and most human groups make collective decisions through particular individuals, leaders, that have a disproportionate influence on group decision-making. To address this discrepancy between theory and data, we study a simple, but general, model that explicitly focuses on the dynamics of consensus building in groups composed by individuals who are heterogeneous in preferences, certain personality traits (agreeability and …
Mechanisms For Social Influence, Jeremy David Auerbach
Mechanisms For Social Influence, Jeremy David Auerbach
Masters Theses
Throughout the thesis, I study mathematical models that can help explain the dependency of social phenomena in animals and humans on individual traits. The first chapter investigates consensus building in human groups through communication of individual preferences for a course of action. Individuals share and modify these preferences through speaker listener interactions. Personality traits, reputations, and social networks structures effect these modifications and eventually the group will reach a consensus. If there is variation in personality traits, the time to reach consensus is delayed. Reputation models are introduced and explored, finding that those who can best estimate the average initial …