Group decisions in humans and animals: a survey

Group decisions in humans and animals: a survey, by Larissa Conradt and Christian List
Abstract:
"Humans routinely make many decisions collectively, whether they choose a restaurant with friends,
elect political leaders or decide actions to tackle international problems, such as climate change, that
affect the future of the whole planet. We might be less aware of it, but group decisions are just as
important to social animals as they are for us. Animal groups have to collectively decide about
communal movements, activities, nesting sites and enterprises, such as cooperative breeding or
hunting, that crucially affect their survival and reproduction. While human group decisions have
been studied for millennia, the study of animal group decisions is relatively young, but is now
expanding rapidly. It emerges that group decisions in animals pose many similar questions to those in
humans. The purpose of the present issue is to integrate and combine approaches in the social and
natural sciences in an area in which theoretical challenges and research questions are often similar,
and to introduce each discipline to the other’s key ideas, findings and successful methods. In order to
make such an introduction as effective as possible, here, we briefly review conceptual similarities and
differences between the sciences, and provide a guide to the present issue".
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2009) 364, 719–742, 2008