Vox populi, vox dei

An exhibition at the Cité des sciences in Paris has the theme: "The crowd, an object of science."

This exhibition is proposed by two researchers Mehdi Moussaid (1) and Coralie Chevalier (2) . It highlights the effect of group dynamics on decision-making (3) .

Confrontation, to the emergence of solutions

Mehdi Moussaid reports an interesting experiment on this subject:

• One organizes a one-on-one chess game against hundreds of players who have to decide together against the one playing alone. In the end, we have a collective performance that is higher than the average level of the players participating in this experiment. This verifies the claims of the proponents of collective intelligence.
  
  
• This researcher also reports on a collective intelligence experiment organized by David Becker who posed a research question in biochemistry. 200,000 people started to think and after 5 days, a viable solution was found.
  
  
• Another experiment that might seem improbable: We take a crowd of individuals and ask them a question for which there is an answer (for example, how many elevators in the Empire State Building). We question a million people and we average the answers. Here is an experiment that I did in a school more than 30 years ago and that everyone can easily reproduce: We take a piece of wood of about 1 meter but whose exact length nobody knows. One asks to evaluate the length of this piece of wood to a population as numerous as possible. It will then be shown that although the difference between the answers is very important (the difference between the lowest and the highest answer), the average of the answers is strangely close to reality.
  
  
• These experiments can be compared to the work of Kurt Lewin (4). Kurt Lewin, among others inventor of the notion of group dynamics, had shown that creating interactions and confrontations between several potential women customers for household products was more effective in triggering a purchasing gesture than most advertising campaigns.

Beyond the pooling of information, it is the confrontation aspect that seems to have an important effect on decision making. This form of collective intelligence emphasizes the function of confrontation to make a thought evolve. We can see an inner confrontation taking place (the inner forum in its original sense of inner forum). The same confrontation with oneself that the client conducts with his therapist.

The interactions between people have a transformative effect on each person's representations, especially if confrontation is allowed. This reality is staged in a masterful way in Sidney Lumet's film Twelve Angry Men (5).

If the actors in a situation are allowed to exchange, discuss, and argue, then each individual brings himself or herself closer to the right answer. Beyond the search for a better score than the opposing group, the interest of this confrontation is to make individual points of view evolve as well as collective decisions.

This is an effect put forward by the psychologist Hugo Mercier (6).

We can also see the effects of a collective confrontation on decision-making: it has been shown in learning enterprise approaches that when confrontation is allowed by instituting it as part of the work, collective decisions are better and the commitment of the actors is maximum.

Democracy, an instituted space for confrontation

It should be noted that the institution of confrontation is the very basis of democratic functioning: in the French legislative system, the two assemblies are each in themselves a place for confrontation between elected officials. And the passage from one chamber to the other also consists of a process of confrontation.

It can be hypothesized that decisions about collectives can only be made after an instituted confrontation. If experts and scientists were legitimate to make decisions about the common life, we would not need democracy to govern. We should remember what Clémenceau said: "War is too serious a thing to be entrusted to the military. Beyond the apparent quip, there is an obvious reality: expertise is made to produce information but rarely to make decisions, mainly in situations of uncertainty.

We saw this recently in the covid crisis; the uncertainty was such that no expertise could claim to provide a certain solution whose results could be predicted. In this sense, the trials made to certain politicians in their management of the crisis may seem somewhat unfair. In such uncertainty, we have no choice but to wander and to try and make mistakes. If we really wanted to blame them for something it could have been for preventing debates, which was not the case.

In this sense the decisions made in a democratic system are, for the most part, the most viable and appropriate decisions.

The art of discussion

The use of confrontation to transform opinions can take quite unexpected forms (7). Many countries have seized on the phenomenon of television series to influence their public opinion. This has been done in particular in India to enable the development of contraception and more recently as a means of mobilizing women in the struggle against the archaic patriarchy that hinders the country's economic development (8).

If we look closely, beyond the appearance of the struggle of good against evil, these series designed to influence opinions, stage confrontations. This favors intrapsychic debate, (the inner self for the individual) and also favors debate within families or communities.

Those who argue that democratic institutions are a waste of energy, time, and money fail to see how these instances, by producing confrontation, allow a collective to self-regulate and self-determine as little as possible.

But while the opportunity for confrontation is necessary, it is not sufficient. We can see this in the current societal debates where the manipulation of certain populations allows leaders like Trump or Bolsonaro to emerge. The education of the citizens remains the necessary condition and a constant preoccupation so that confrontations exist that are something other than battles of slogans reflecting the fear and ignorance of those who carry them. For in this case vox populi can become vox diaboli.

References

1 Mehdi Moussaid, cognitive scientist at the Max Planck Institute and curator of the exhibition; author of fouloscopy: what the crowd says about us.
https://fouloscopie.com/

2 Coralie Chevalier, curator of the exhibition. researcher in cognitive science at Normal Sup.

Pdf document on the exhibition Foules
https://www.cite-sciences.fr/fr/au-programme/expos-temporaires/foules

3 It will be interesting to listen to Radio France's podcast on this exhibition: La mécanique des foules - France Inter
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/la-terre-au-carre/la-terre-au-carre-du-mercredi-26-octobre-2022-7530201

4 Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), American psychologist specializing in social psychology and behaviorism, a major player in the school of human relations. For more details on Kurt Lewin's experiment, Permission Marketing
https://www.sam-mag.com/archives/permission.htm

5 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douze_Hommes_en_col%C3%A8re_(film)

Hugo Mercier. Institut Jean Nicod Laboratory IJN ESC. SOCIAL COGNITION: FROM BRAIN TO SOCIETY team.
Personal website. https://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/

6 Series and Politics - When Fiction Contributes to Opinion
https://clio-cr.clionautes.org/series-et-politique-quand-la-fiction-contribue-a-lopinion.html

7 How the Series "I, Woman, Can Accomplish Anything" Awakens Feminism in India
https://www.lesinrocks.com/actu/comment-la-serie-moi-femme-je-peux-tout-accomplir-reveille-le-feminisme-en-inde-138670-21-10-2017/