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Updated: Jul 11, 2025
06:48
The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior
Published on: January 19, 2019
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Incentivizing free riders improves collective intelligence in social dilemmas.
Ofer Tchernichovski1, Seth Frey2,3, Nori Jacoby4
1Department of Psychology, Hunter College, The City University of New York, New York, NY 10065.
Summary
Free riders, often overlooked, provide more accurate collective intelligence than frequent contributors. Incentivizing these free riders enhances group decision-making and overall collective intelligence.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
- Computational Social Science
Background:
- Collective intelligence tasks, such as voting and rating, often face collective action problems.
- Individuals may free ride on the contributions of others, particularly those who are intrinsically motivated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether intrinsically motivated agents are optimal participants in collective decision-making.
- To explore the role of free riders in collective intelligence tasks and the impact of incentives.
Main Methods:
- A large-scale virtual world public good game was used to embed a collective intelligence task.
- Participant contributions and evaluation accuracy were measured, with a focus on free riders versus frequent raters.
- Underlying mechanisms, including rating bias, were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Participants identified as free riders provided more accurate evaluations compared to frequent raters.
- A negative rating bias in free riders correlated with their higher accuracy.
- Incentivizing evaluations increased the influence of free riders without decreasing their accuracy, improving collective intelligence.
Conclusions:
- Collective intelligence systems may underperform by over-selecting intrinsically motivated participants.
- Incentivizing free riders can enhance collective intelligence in situations with collective action problems.
- Increasing the diversity of contributor motivations is key to improving collective intelligence.
Keywords:
collective intelligencecomputational social sciencecrowd wisdomsocial dilemmassocial feedbackMore Related Videos
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