1. Decision Making in Groups

2. Outline Why make decisions in groups? Activity
Information sharing in groups
Group polarization

3. Why Make Decisions in Groups?
1) More knowledge, more ideas, better memories
2) Evaluate opinions better, catch errors.
3) Have standards for making decisions
Social decision schemes:
The process by which individual inputs are combined to yield a group decision
4) Can hide from individual responsibility

4. Group Decision Making Exercise
Group Decision Making Activity
Crime on Sesame Street
Who dunnit?

5. Exercise Instructions
INDIVIDUALLY read through the scenario and all of the evidence
INDIVIDUALLY make your decision as to who committed the crime
As a GROUP discuss the case and unanimously agree on who committed the crime

6. Are Group Decisions Always Good?
Of course not.
Why do groups sometimes fail?

7. Information Sharing Problems in Groups
Fail to pool unshared information effectively
Tendency to oversample shared information
This tendency is exacerbated in tasks without ‘correct’ decisions
Leaders can prompt members to revealed unshared information

8. Group Decision Making Exercise
INDIVIDUALLY, read the scenarios and check the solution you favor.
As a GROUP, discuss the scenarios and reach an unanimous opinion on each of them.

9. Group Decision Making Exercise
Examine your scores:
1. Calculate your score prior to the discussion by summing your odds and dividing by 3.
2. Calculate your group’s prediscussion average score.
3. Compute your group’s postdiscussion score.
4. Draw a diagram of your group indicating the location of each person, the group’s prediscussion score, and the discussion score along a continuum from risk to caution.

10. Groups: Moderating or Polarizing?
Common belief:
Groups exert a moderating effect on their members
Groups more moderate decision makers than individuals
But then…
In the early 1960s researchers questioned this assumption

11. Risky Shift Research Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire (CDQ)
12 life-situation problems involving a central person with a choice between more or less risky courses of action.
The participant's task is to choose the lowest likelihood of success he or she would demand before recommending the risky alternative.
SS complete the CDQ alone, after discussing it with a group, and again alone

12. Risky Shift Research
Comparing individual responses to group responses:
SS generally advocated riskier decisions in groups!
This change carried over to later individual choices
This is the RISKY SHIFT

13. Risky Shift Research
Researchers found risky shifts on many attitudes, beliefs, values, judgements and perceptions.
Some researchers found a different kind of shift:
Shift toward caution
Risky shift is part of a larger process!

14. Group Polarization Discussion leads to group polarization:
Judgments made after group discussion will be more extreme in the same direction as the average of individual judgments prior to discussion.
The direction of the polarization depends on the group members’ original viewpoints.
Thus, before we can predict how the discussion will polarize the group, we must know the initial opinions of the members.

15. Group Polarization 1 5 9 3 7 C & D A B E F Risky Shift Cautious Shift
Caution
Risk 3 7
C & D A B E F

16. Why?
Why do we shift our judgments to match the position that our group initially values?
Two theoretical explanations:
Persuasive arguments theory
Social comparison theory

17. Persuasive Arguments Theory
After discussion, we can generate more arguments favoring the more valued alternative.
With the CDQ, arguments favoring risk rather than caution are more plentiful.

18. Social Comparison Theory
During group discussion people actively compare themselves with others
When they discover that some members of the group have stronger attitudes than they do, they begin endorsing more extreme positions.