@inproceedings{wu-ito-2025-hidden,
    title = "The Hidden Strength of Disagreement: Unraveling the Consensus-Diversity Tradeoff in Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems",
    author = "Wu, Zengqing  and
      Ito, Takayuki",
    editor = "Christodoulopoulos, Christos  and
      Chakraborty, Tanmoy  and
      Rose, Carolyn  and
      Peng, Violet",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
    month = nov,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Suzhou, China",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-emnlp/2025.emnlp-main.772/",
    pages = "15288--15308",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-332-6",
    abstract = "Consensus formation is pivotal in multi-agent systems (MAS), balancing collective coherence with individual diversity. Conventional LLM-based MAS primarily rely on explicit coordination, e.g., prompts or voting, risking premature homogenization. We argue that implicit consensus, where agents exchange information yet independently form decisions via in-context learning, can be more effective in dynamic environments that require long-horizon adaptability. By retaining partial diversity, systems can better explore novel strategies and cope with external shocks. We formalize a consensus-diversity tradeoff, showing conditions where implicit methods outperform explicit ones. Experiments on three scenarios {--} Dynamic Disaster Response, Information Spread and Manipulation, and Dynamic Public-Goods Provision {--} confirm partial deviation from group norms boosts exploration, robustness, and performance. We highlight emergent coordination via in-context learning, underscoring the value of preserving diversity for resilient decision-making."
}