The advantages of majority decision making

Abstract

Social interactions resulting in the formation of groups or flocks have been investigated extensively. Flocking is likely to convey several advantages, including lower susceptibility to predation, improved predator detection, increased accuracy of orientation, and transfer of information about feeding sites. There is another possible advantage, namely that decisions made in a social context might be more accurate.

Nearly two centuries ago, Condorcet (1785) showed that a majority decision made by a group of humans is more likely to be correct than the same decision made by a single individual. Recent extensive theoretical work in the social sciences has yielded many in interesting theoretical results. Some time ago, Lorenz (1952) suggested that decisions made by flocks of animals might involve a consensus. Yet, social decision making in animals has remained largely uninvestingated, despite the fact that a great many decisions are made by the individual in a context which at a glance might be expected to allow that individual to take advantage of information available from other individuals. In this paper, the theoretical basis of majority decision making by animals is outlined and the adaptive significance of behaving in this way is stressed.