Communication plays an important role in consensus decision-making which pervades our daily life. However, the exact role of communication in consensus formation is not clear. Here, to study the effects of communication on consensus formation, we designed a dyadic colour estimation task, where a pair of isolated participants repeatedly estimated the colours of discs until they reached a consensus or completed eight estimations, either with or without communication. We show that participants’ estimates gradually approach each other, reaching towards a consensus, and these are enhanced with communication. We also show that dyadic consensus estimation is on average better than individual estimation. Surprisingly, consensus estimation without communication generally outperforms that with communication, indicating that communication impairs the improvement of consensus estimation. However, without communication, it takes longer to reach a consensus. Moreover, participants who partially cooperate with each other tend to result in better overall consensus. Taken together, we have identified the effect of communication on the dynamics of consensus formation, and the results may have implications on group decision-making in general.

沟通在遍布我们日常生活的共识决策中扮演着重要角色。但是，在共识形成过程中沟通的确切作用尚不清楚。在这里，为了研究沟通对共识形成的影响，我们设计了一个二进位颜色估计任务，其中一对孤立的参与者反复估计光盘的颜色，直到他们达成共识或完成八次估计（无论有无沟通）。我们表明，参与者的估计逐渐接近彼此，达成共识，并且随着沟通的进行而增强。我们还表明，二进共识估计平均而言要好于个人估计。令人惊讶的是，在没有沟通的情况下达成共识的估算通常要比有沟通的情况要好，表示沟通有损共识估计的改善。但是，如果没有沟通，则需要更长的时间才能达成共识。此外，部分相互合作的参与者往往会导致更好的总体共识。综上所述，我们已经确定了交流对共识形成动态的影响，其结果可能总体上对集团决策产生影响。