Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People often have to decide if a claim is true (for example, that climate change is caused by human activity) even if they do not have the necessary knowledge or experience. It is common for people to turn to others to determine if a claim is true. When multiple sources agree, it can be a strong indicator of who to trust and what to believe (Mercier & Morin, 2019). In cognitive science, there is debate about what makes a “consensus” and how it should influence our decisions. Some models suggest that agreement among independent sources is more reliable than among sources who have communicated with each other (Whalen, Griffiths, & Buchsbaum, 2018; Bovens & Hartmann, 2004; Dietrich & Spiekermann, 2013). Recent empirical and modelling work (Pilditch, Hahn, Fenton, & Lagnado, 2020), however, suggests that having sources that are connected can sometimes provide more reliable information than having sources that are independent. This symposium brings together researchers from a range of disciplines (cognitive modelling, social network modelling, cognitive psychology, philosophy) to examine what makes a consensus persuasive, and it should guide our judgments and inferences.