Where the best option can only be identified by combining information distributed across members, groups usually fail to find it and choose the option the shared information favours.
The paradigm distributes clues so that each member, reading only their own, prefers an inferior candidate, while the full set favours another. Groups reliably pick the inferior one. The failure is not of reasoning but of pooling: the information required was present in the room and never assembled.
In practice
- A committee with all the facts between them selects the option every individual preferred on partial information.
- An investigation finds afterwards that four people each held a piece and no meeting ever put them together.
- Standing
- The experimental complement to shared information bias: the profile is hidden because no individual holds enough of it.
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors