Self-organizing group structure through rewiring for collective decision-making in evolving environments

DeGroot dynamics, a prototypical model of opinion formation under social influence, tends to yield biased consensus in centralized groups. However, such a consensus can be accurate if competent individuals occupy central positions and exert disproportionate influence. Focusing on groups with stable memberships that engage in iterative consensus formation across a sequence of issues, we propose social network rewiring as a self-organization mechanism that identifies competent members and positions them centrally, thereby empowering them to make decisions on behalf of the group. Numerical experiments show that the effects of rewiring on consensus accuracy and structural adaptability oppose each other depending on its search scope. Local rewiring-where agents search for new connections within their immediate neighborhoods-progressively concentrates influence among competent members and enhances consensus accuracy but reduces the group's adaptability to evolving environments, modeled as temporal shifts in individual competence. In contrast, global rewiring-where agents may connect to any member of the group-preserves adaptability but significantly undermines accuracy. A unique contribution of this study lies in its novel approach to information integration for collective decision-making, shifting the focus from the intrinsic information individuals possess to information about agents' competence, acquired from local interactions and communicated through rewiring.