At US lab, minnows reveal power of the 'uninformed'

It might sound fishy, but researchers at Princeton University say minnows make perfect lab rats when it comes to exploring the surprising power of the uninformed in group decision-making. Golden shiners that would otherwise be dangling at the end of a hook as bait are unlikely but prized collaborators for scientists at the New Jersey campus where Nobel laureates such as Albert Einstein have toiled. They feature in findings published Thursday in the journal Science that suggest individuals with no strong feelings about a given situation's outcome can dilute the influence of a powerful minority that would otherwise dominate. In other words, thanks to the mighty minnow, it could be a scientific fact that apolitical individuals, when pressed for a decision, will shun the minority view -- no matter how savvy, shrill or strident that view might be. "Fish provide a really convenient small-scale system where they exhibit really fantastic collective dynamics," said the study's lead writer Iain Couzin of Princeton's department of ecology and environmental biology. "They're very easy to train and they develop strong preferences," the Scottish-born professor said, as well as being "strongly schooling fish" which makes them "a nice biological model of consensus decision-making." Supplying the minnows -- golden shiners are common in the wild throughout eastern North America -- was Anderson Minnow Farm of Lonoke, Arkansas, which breeds literally billions of them every year to be used as bait. In a Princeton laboratory, one group of fish was trained to associate the color blue with a food reward. Another, smaller group was trained to do the same -- but with the color yellow, because in their natural habitat, golden shiners are known to favor that shade over all others. Putting the two groups together found the minority calling the shots when it came to deciding to what color the entire school would swim to to collect their tropical-flake reward. But then things changed when a few, untrained fish -- representing what Couzin's team called the "uninformed' segment of the piscine realm, with no preference for one color or another -- were added to the mix. "As we added 'uninformed individuals' into the process, we can actually flip the group back to majority control," Couzin told AFP in a telephone interview. "The uninformed individuals spontaneously support the majority view and effectively reduce the differences of intransigence between the two subsets." Running the result through mathematical models and computer simulations, the researchers found parallels with human behavior that blew common assumptions about the power of outspoken minorities out of the water. "We usually assume that a highly opinionated and forceful group is going to sway everyone," said Donald Saari of the University of California, cited in a Princeton news release. "What we have here is something very different." In a political context, it could explain why an hardline candidate or extremist party might do well in a US primary or British by-election, but stumble when "uninformed" voters turn out en masse for a general election. "The uninformed individuals effectively are promoting a democratic outcome," Couzin said, adding however that there are limits -- as his researchers discovered back at the fish tank. "As we keep adding 'uninformed individuals,' eventually 'noise' (confusion) dominates," he said. At that point, information of any kind is no longer shared effectively -- and the whole group starts making decisions randomly.