Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely: How can groups make good decisions? (#3)

Sigman and Ariely discuss the dynamics of groups. They discuss how groups come to decisions, whether they are good or bad. They performed some experiments on crowds, showing that crowds gave more accurate answers than individuals on average. They concluded that group behaviors apply well to right-or-wrong answers. But what about other questions? It is shown that in dilemmas, groups with people who are confident with being in the middle of viewpoints are more likely to reach a concensus.
The researchers then attempted to determine how these decsisons are made. It was shown that groups used a procedure known as the "robust average," which gives a rough estimate of all the answers that the members give while discrediting outliers.
I feel like this is a very interesting aspect of group behavior, because how groups make decisions is how most interactions in society go.