Evolutionary Perspective on Collective Decision Making

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This project was supported by the NSF Human and Social Dynamics Program (Award #: NSF SES-0826711).
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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About the Project

Collective decision making plays an increasingly important role everywhere in today's human society. Existing literature addresses issues in collective decision making with linear statistical analysis or relatively simple dynamical modeling. Either approach is still limited in capturing the complexity of real human decision making dynamics that typically involve high-dimensional nonlinear problem space, nontrivial societal structure, within-individual cognitive and behavioral patterns, and/or between-individual diversity.

In this NSF-funded project which ran from 2008 through 2012, researchers developed and proposed novel conceptual/computational multi-level models of the dynamics of complex collective decision making by uniquely shifting the viewpoint from the dynamics of participants to the dynamics of ideas being discussed. In the proposed framework, collective decision making is redefined as evolution of ecologies of ideas over a social network habitat, where populations of potential solutions evolve via continual applications of evolutionary operators such as reproduction, recombination, mutation, selection, and migration of solutions, each conducted by participating humans. The effects of various model assumptions on collective decision making were studied through computer simulations, and their results were validated through experiments of team decision making on complex collaborative tasks with human subjects.

This project presented a novel perspective on human and social dynamics by introducing evolutionary principles and methodologies into the modeling of their complex behaviors, making a theoretical advancement from a traditional, individually-focused psychological or social science paradigm to a more dynamic, multilevel, evolutionary paradigm for collective social processes. The project outcomes include a number of practical implications, e.g., the effects of coherence of shared information and organizational structure within teams upon their exploratory and adaptive performances, which will be widely applicable to current issues that many human organizations are facing today. The outcomes of this project has been integrated into undergraduate and graduate education at Binghamton University.

Research Team

Principal investigators

• Hiroki Sayama, D.Sc. (PI; Associate Professor, Departments of Bioengineering & Systems Science and Industrial Engineering)
• Shelley D. Dionne, Ph.D. (co-PI; Associate Professor, School of Management)
• Craig B. Laramee, Ph.D. (co-PI; Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering)
• Francis J. Yammarino, Ph.D. (co-PI; Distinguished Professor, School of Management)

Collaborators

• J. David Schaffer, Ph.D. (Research Professor, Department of Bioengineering)
• Janaki Gooty, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor, Organizational Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
• Jin Akaishi, Ph.D. (Visiting Scholar, CoCo Research Group / Associate Professor, Kumamoto National College of Technology, Japan)

Students

• Chanyu Hao (School of Management)
• Benjamin James Bush (Systems Science)
• Andra Serban (School of Management)
• Thomas Raway (Systems Science)
• Hadassah Head (Systems Science)
• Alka Gupta (School of Management)
• Kristie Shirreffs (School of Management)
• Jeffrey Schmidt (Systems Science)

Publications and Presentations

Journal Articles

• Hiroki Sayama and Shelley D. Dionne, Studying collective human decision making and creativity with evolutionary computation, Artificial Life, 21:379-393, 2015. Abstract/PDF
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley D. Dionne, and Francis J. Yammarino, Evolutionary perspectives on collective decision making: Studying the implications of diversity and social network structure with agent-based simulations. Preprint
• Hiroki Sayama, Dene L. Farrell, and Shelley D. Dionne, The effects of mental model formation on group decision making: An agent-based simulation, Complexity 16: 49-57, 2011. Abstract/PDF
• Benjamin James Bush and Hiroki Sayama, Hyperinteractive evolutionary computation, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 15: 424-433, 2011. Abstract/PDF
• Shelley D. Dionne, Hiroki Sayama, Chanyu Hao, and Benjamin James Bush, The role of leadership in shared mental model convergence and team performance improvement: An agent-based computational model, Leadership Quarterly 21:1035-1049, 2010.

Book Chapter

• Hiroki Sayama, Guiding designs of self-organizing swarms: Interactive and automated approaches, Mikhail Prokopenko, ed., Guided Self-Organization: Inception, Springer, 2014, pp.365-387.

Conference Proceedings

• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley D. Dionne, and Francis J. Yammarino, Effects of social network size and topology on evolutionary decision making, Proceedings of the Thirteenth European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2015), 2015, p. 603, MIT Press. Abstract/PDF
• Hiroki Sayama and Shelley D. Dionne, Using evolutionary computation as models/tools for human decision making and creativity research, Proceedings of the Fourth IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life (IEEE ALIFE 2013), Singapore, 2013, IEEE, in press.
• Benjamin James Bush, Jeffrey Schmidt, and Hiroki Sayama, Behavior and centrality in idea exchanging adaptive social networks, in Hiroki Sayama, Ali A. Minai, Dan Braha, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, eds., Unifying Themes in Complex Systems Volume VIII: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS 2011), New England Complex Systems Institute Series on Complexity, NECSI Knowledge Press, 2011, pp.437-438. PDF
• Hadassah J. Head, Benjamin James Bush, Alka Gupta, Hiroki Sayama, and Shelley D. Dionne, Network-informed idea selection strategies for electronic brainstorming, in Hiroki Sayama, Ali A. Minai, Dan Braha, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, eds., Unifying Themes in Complex Systems Volume VIII: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS 2011), New England Complex Systems Institute Series on Complexity, NECSI Knowledge Press, 2011, pp.731-733. PDF
• Jin Akaishi, Hiroki Sayama, Shelley D. Dionne, Xiujian Chen, Alka Gupta, Chanyu Hao, Andra Serban, Benjamin James Bush, Hadassah J. Head, and Francis J. Yammarino, Reconstructing history of social network evolution using web search engines, Proceedings of the 5th International ICST Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (BIONETICS 2010 -- Boston, MA, December 1-3, 2010), Jun Suzuki and Tadashi Nakano, eds., LNICST 87, pp.155–162, 2012. Springer. Abstract/PDF
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley Dionne, Craig Laramee, and David Sloan Wilson, Enhancing the architecture of interactive evolutionary design for exploring heterogeneous particle swarm dynamics: An in-class experiment, Proceedings of the Second IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life (IEEE-CI-ALife '09), Nashville, TN, 2009, IEEE, pp.85-91. PDF
• Dene Farrell, Hiroki Sayama, Shelley Dionne, Francis Yammarino, and David Sloan Wilson, Evolutionary perspective on collective decision making, presented as a talk at the Seventh International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2007), Boston, Massachusetts, 2007. PDF

Keynote/Invited Talks

• Hiroki Sayama, Using evolutionary computation as models/tools for human decision making and creativity research, an invited talk at Tau Beta Pi New York Tau Chapter, April 10, 2013, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY.
• Hiroki Sayama, Using evolutionary computation as models/tools for human decision making and creativity research, an invited talk at Xerox Research Center, October 3, 2012, Webster, NY.
• Hiroki Sayama, Evolutionary perspective on collective decision making, an invited talk and discussion at the National Humanities Center Scholarly Conversation on the Logic of Collective Decision Making, January 13-14, 2012, Research Triangle Park, NC.
• Hiroki Sayama, Guiding designs of self-organizing swarms: Interactive and automated approaches, a keynote talk at The Fourth International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization (GSO 4), September 8-10, 2011, University of Hertfordshire, UK.
• Hiroki Sayama, Evolutionary understanding of human decision making processes: Evolutionary Computation as a theoretical framework for social sciences, a keynote talk at The Japanese Society for Evolutionary Computation Symposium 2010, December 18-19, 2010, Fukuoka, Japan.
• Hiroki Sayama, Understanding and improving collective decision making, an invited talk at Kresge Center for Nursing Research, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, March 16, 2010.
• Hiroki Sayama, Evolutionary perspective on collective decision making and product design: An experimental approach, Science Friday, June 5, 2009, Icosystem, Cambridge, MA.

Presentations

• Hiroki Sayama, Studying collective human decision making and creativity with evolutionary computation, presented as a talk at CCS 2016 Satellite Symposium on Determinants of Creativity and Innovation in Science, Art and Technology, September 20, 2016, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Slides
• Hiroki Sayama, Evolutionary perspectives on collective decision making: Theoretical models, computer simulations, and real-world experiments, an invited research seminar talk at the School of Commerce, Waseda University, May 26, 2016, Tokyo, Japan.
• Hiroki Sayama, Swarm Chemistry: Guiding designs of self-organizing swarms, presented as a talk at the Engineering and Control of Self-Organization track of the CS-DC'15 World e-Conference, September 30-October 1, 2015. Recorded Talk / Slides
• Benjamin James Bush and Hiroki Sayama, Interactive evolutionary computation: Combining computers and humans into evolutionary systems, presented as a poster at EvoS Summit: Expanding Darwin's Reach across the Ivory Archipelago, October 26, 2012, State University of New York at New Paltz.
• Chanyu Hao, Andra Serban, Shelley D. Dionne, and Hiroki Sayama, Effects of expertise and prediscussion decision on group decision making, presented as a poster at The 27th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), April 26-28, 2012, San Diego, CA.
• Hadassah Head, Electronic brainstorming: Is fluency all there is to it?, Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems Research Group Seminar Series, Binghamton University, March 7, 2012. Vimeo
• Chanyu Hao and Andra Serban, Effects of team gender composition, expertise distribution, prediscussion decision and preference diversity on group decision-making, Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems Research Group Seminar Series, Binghamton University, November 16, 2011. Vimeo
• Hadassah Head, Network-informed idea selection strategies for electronic brainstorming, Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems Research Group Seminar Series, Binghamton University, April 27, 2011. Vimeo
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley D. Dionne, Chanyu Hao, and Benjamin James Bush, Shared mental model formation and mutual learning on social networks, presented at INFORMS 2010 Annual Meeting, November 7-10, 2010, Austin, TX.
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley Dionne, Craig Laramee, David Schaffer and Francis Yammarino, Evolutionary perspective on collective decision making: Computer simulations and human-subject experiments, presented at The 2010 Computational Social Science Society Conference, November 5-6, 2010, Tempe, AZ.
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley Dionne, Chanyu Hao and Benjamin Bush, Shared mental model formation and mutual learning on social networks, presented at The 2010 Computational Social Science Society Conference, November 5-6, 2010, Tempe, AZ.
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley D. Dionne, Craig Laramee, J. David Schaffer, and Francis J. Yammarino, Evolutionary perspective on collective decision making, presented as a poster at The NSF Human and Social Dynamics 2010 Grantees Conference, Arlington, VA, September 27-28, 2010.
• Hiroki Sayama, Shelley D. Dionne, Chanyu Hao, and Benjamin J. Bush, Shared mental model formation on social networks, presented as a poster at NetSci 2010: International School and Conference on Network Science, May 10-14, 2010, Boston, MA.
• Shelley D. Dionne, Hiroki Sayama, and Francis J. Yammarino, An examination of team emergent processes, mental models, and decision making with agent-based modeling, presented as a talk/paper at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, August 7-11, 2009, Chicago, IL.
• Shelley D. Dionne, Hiroki Sayama, Dene Farrell, Francis J. Yammarino, David Sloan Wilson, Jessica Federman, Elizabeth Carroll, and Donald Gause, Evolutionary perspective on group decision making: A within- and between-groups simulation, presented as a talk/paper at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, August 3-8, 2007, Philadelphia, PA.

Theses

• Hadassah J. Head, Using a Network Informed Electronic Brainstorming Application to Study Collective Human Ideation, M.S. Thesis, Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2012. ProQuest page
• Benjamin James Bush, Studying the Evolution of Ideas at Multiple Spatio-Temporal Scales Using Extended Evolutionary Computation, Ph.D. Thesis, Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2016.

Annual reports

• Project annual report 2008-2009 (.pdf, 27kb)
• Project annual report 2009-2010 (.pdf, 40kb)
• Project annual report 2010-2011 (.pdf, 67kb)
• Project final report 2012 (.pdf, 51kb)

News articles featuring this project

• "Group offers new perspective on decision-making" (BU discover-e, September 22, 2008)
• "NSF grant to support decision-making project" (Inside BU, September 25, 2008)
• "Half a million given to Bing research group" (BU Pipe Dream, October 14, 2008)
• "From social networking to swarm intelligence: Research shows how complex systems rule everyday life" (Binghamton Research, January 2009)
• "Piecing Ideas Together: An interdisciplinary faculty project delves into how sparkling ideas evolve out of team dynamics" (Binghamton Magazine, Summer 2009)
  

Online Resources

• Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems Research Group, Binghamton University
• Center for Leadership Studies, Binghamton University
• EvoS: Evolutionary Studies Program at Binghamton University

Contact Us

Please address any inquiries about this project to:

Hiroki Sayama, D.Sc.
Director, Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems
Associate Professor, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering
Binghamton University, State University of New York
P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
Email: sayama@binghamton.edu
Tel: (607) 777-3566

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