Fig. 1

The basic properties of the model a An “external reality” (or “environment”), which can be observed by the agents, is given. This environment is represented by K randomly generated numbers taken from the [0,1] interval with uniform distribution. In the example of this figure K = 5. b Each agent-member of the group-maintains a K-long “belief vector” reflecting their information about the “external reality”. Agents are able to observe only a fraction H of the environment (marked green). In this example H = 0.2, that is, the given agent is able to observe 1 element of the environment vector. c and d Agents can also communicate, during which a “source” individual shares the data of a randomly selected element of their belief vector (marked red) with the “target” individual. As a results, the corresponding element of the target individual’s belief vector gets closer to that of the agent sending the data. That is, their corresponding beliefs get closer to each other. This type of communication defines a one-directional information transfer