{
  "id": 10749786,
  "title": "Consensus Formation History Shapes Collective Updating",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/consensus-formation-history-shapes-collective-updating",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-29T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.23.753723v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Consensus is typically formed and then updated over time, particularly in dynamic environments. Prior studies have mainly focused on the initial formation of consensus, leaving the process of updating pre-existing agreements less researched. This has left two key questions unanswered: does the cost of reaching consensus influence subsequent updates, and is this relationship dependent on the expense of the initial agreement? To address these questions, researchers developed a controlled experiment called the Fake Consensus paradigm. They manipulated the perceived cost of reaching consensus and observed how dyads, or small groups of two individuals, adjusted their collective judgments when confronted with new information. To provide a point of comparison, an independent study was also conducted with individuals responding to the same evidence. The results were surprising: groups that formed consensuses at lower costs tended to update their judgments less than individual benchmarks, while those with medium and high costs updated more frequently than individuals. The researchers found that the strength of this relationship between consensus cost and updating was influenced by shared endorsement of the consensus and the level of alignment between individuals, as measured by brain synchronization. This study is the first to comprehensively examine consensus updating in a controlled setting, distinguishing the impact of formation history from the presence of actual disagreements. The findings provide a new framework for understanding how collective judgments evolve following initial agreement.",
  "summary": "Consensus is rarely a one-off achievement. In a changing world, groups must repeatedly update judgments they have already agreed upon, making consensus updating a common feature of real-world collective decisions. However, previous research on collective decision-making has focused mainly on how groups reach a single consensus, leaving the updating of established consensus largely unexamined.…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}