Abstract
Previous studies about heuristics have mainly focused on whether heuristics work adaptively in the individual inference. However, adaptive nature of heuristics may differ in collective decision making. In the present study, we theoretically examined effect of individual inference on collective decision making. We compared performance of collective decision making among groups who used one of inference strategies (recognition heuristic, fluency heuristic, familiarity heuristic, or knowledge-based inference). Furthermore, we compared two situations that made different assumptions about how group made decisions. Our findings are summarized as follows:. First, heuristics that worked adaptively in individual inference did not always work adaptively in collective decision making. Second, adaptive natures of heuristics in collective decision making can vary depending on how group makes decisions. Thus, present findings indicate that adaptive nature of heuristic has to be discussed in terms of not only individual inferences, but also “wisdom of crowd.”
