Getting it right: Communication, voting, and collective truth finding

We conduct an experiment to examine how communication affects the accuracy of collective judgments in small groups evaluating the truth of politically relevant facts and statements. We find that communication improves the accuracy of the group when individuals are more likely to be wrong, but reduces it when individuals are more likely to be correct—a pattern that reveals how deliberation can both clarify and confuse. Communication influences not only group accuracy but also individual belief updating. When groups vote without prior discussion, individuals appear to interpret others’ votes as mildly informative signals and update their beliefs about the likelihood that the statement is true accordingly. However, when communication occurs before voting, this pattern disappears, suggesting that social cues conveyed through discussion override the informational value of votes. Our analysis of chat transcripts reveals that group members use communication to share factual knowledge and engage in interactive reasoning, especially for difficult items. These findings highlight that while deliberation can facilitate truth-seeking, it can also undermine accuracy when consensus builds around mistaken beliefs.