Accuracy and Perceived Expert Status in Group Decisions: When Minority Members Make Majority Members More Accurate Privately

Abstract

We examined how the minority's perceived (i.e., not real) expertise affects group discussion and performance. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to interacting groups in which the minority faction was perceived as either expert or not. Groups performed a decision task that involved solving a murder mystery. Both experiments showed that minorities perceived as expert (vs. not perceived as expert) made majority individuals acquire more accurate private judgments after group discussion, although the public group decision was not more accurate. In parallel, perceived expertise made minority members change their own judgments less. Experiment 1 also showed that minorities' questioning behaviors mediated the effect of minorities' perceived expertise on majority members' private accuracy. Experiment 2 further showed that majority members' deeper processing was also a mediator. Thus, minorities with perceived expertise serve as a catalyst, increasing the quality of majority members' cognitions, but not their own.

The double-edged impact of future expectations in groups: Minority influence depends on minorities’ and majorities’ expectations to interact again

“…Thus, minority arguments need to be expressed by the minority but also get heard by the majority to be factored in the final group decision. This point is consistent with prior findings showing that greater information processing in the discussion does not always translate into actual decision-making by the group (e.g., Scholten et al, 2007;Schulz-Hardt, Frey, Lüthgens, & Moscovici, 2000;Sinaceur, Thomas-Hunt, Neale, O'Neill, & Haag, 2010). These arguments imply that the effect of future expectations on minority influence on the majorities' private decisions and the group's public decision will occur through both the minority expressing more dissenting information and the majority being more attentive to divergent information.…”

“…Because of the high reliability between coders, the remaining transcriptions were coded by one of the coders, again blind to conditions (for a similar procedure, see Homan et al, 2007;Sinaceur et al, 2010;Ten Velden et al, 2007).…”

“…Building on prior research on interactive group decision-making, we operationalized minority and majority status based on group members' pre-discussion opinions that were made known at the outset of the discussion (e.g., McLeod et al, 1997;Phillips, 2003;Sinaceur et al, 2010).…”

Minority Influence in Virtual Groups

“…Whereas both private and public opinions of maj ority members can change as a result of minority influence (Nemeth, 1986), in some situations majority members may privately agree with the minority's opinion, without acknowledging the deviant position in public (Moscovici, 1980). Because public agreement with a minority position is contrary to the group norm and, therefore, more costly, minority influence produces more private than public changes in majority members' opinions and behaviors (e.g., Sinaceur, Thomas-Hunt, Neale, O'Neill, & Haag, 2010).…”

The Effects of Expertise and Social Status on Team Member Influence and the Moderating Roles of Intragroup Conflicts

“…This line of research has offered compelling evidence to suggest that perceived expertise is the dominant predictor of intragroup influence in teams whose members have a shared goal of accomplishing an interdependent task (Van der Vegt et al, 2006). Thus, expertise apparently does not need to be real to affect group interactions (Sinaceur, Thomas-Hunt, Neale, O’Neill, & Haag, 2010). For example, experts perceived by other members might feel more confident in their abilities, and thus be more motivated to participate in team projects than those whose expertise is not perceived (Littlepage et al, 1995; Thomas-Hunt, Ogden, & Neale, 2003).…”