{
  "id": 9002464,
  "title": "Confidence Read from Others Movements Guides Collective Decisions",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/21/confidence-read-from-others-movements-guides-collective-decisions",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-21T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.14.748905v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Deciding when to trust one's own judgment versus relying on others is a central challenge in decision-making. Researchers have discovered that humans effortlessly interpret others' confidence through their body movements and utilize this information to make collective decisions. In a study, dyads engaged in a decision-making task where one participant, the arbitrator, made an individual choice, observed their partner's choice, and then made a collective decision representing both individuals.\n\nWhen the arbitrator's confidence was either low or high, they followed straightforward heuristics - revising their choice if uncertain and confirming it if certain. However, in cases of moderate confidence, the arbitrator drew upon their partner's movement kinematics to inform their decision. Simulations revealed that incorporating the partner's encoded confidence boosted the group's overall accuracy. This research underscores the significance of bodily motion in transmitting confidence information in social decision-making scenarios.",
  "summary": "A central challenge in decision-making is deciding when to trust ones own judgement and when to rely on others. Because subjective confidence correlates with objective accuracy, a sensible strategy is to follow the choice made with higher confidence. Crucially, however, this strategy depends on accessing others confidence. Here, we show that humans spontaneously read out confidence from others…",
  "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."
}