Group Performance and Decision Making

Kerr, Norbert L.; Tindale, R. Scott

doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142009

Cited by 1,058 publications

(790 citation statements)

References 267 publications

(196 reference statements)

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“…The current research differs from much of the existing research on group decisionmaking which traditionally examines how factors present during interaction influence whether group members capitalize on disagreement (c.f., Kerr and Tindale 2004). Although the past work provides useful insight into how factors present during interactions can improve decision-making, it does not examine: 1) whether the information brought to the discussion by individual group members differs in the extent to which it has been processed and, 2) what might systematically influence the degree of processing.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus

Loyd

Wang

Phillips

et al. 2013

Organization Science

120

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A purported downside of social category diversity is decreased relationship focus (i.e., one’s focus on establishing a positive social bond with a coworker). However, we argue that this lack of relationship focus serves as a central mechanism that improves information processing even prior to interaction and, ultimately, decision-making performance in diverse settings. We introduce the construct of premeeting elaboration (i.e., the extent to which individuals consider their own and others’ perspectives in the anticipation of an interaction) and explore its link with social category diversity and relationship focus. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that when disagreement occurs, social category diversity increases premeeting elaboration, with relationship focus as a central causal mechanism. Experiment 3 shows that premeeting elaboration has important implications for performance: disagreeing dyads with social category diversity elaborate more prior to meeting and, as a result, perform better on a decision-making task than those with social category homogeneity. We discuss the value of studying early-stage interaction and propose a reconsideration of the “downside” of social category diversity.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus

Loyd

Wang

Phillips

et al. 2013

Organization Science

120

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“…Even when a small group has an explicit rule other than a majority rule, the largest initial faction, that is, the plurality, is usually the ultimate winner (cf. Hastie, Penrod, & Pennington, 1983;Kameda, Tindale, & Davis, 2003;Kerr & Tindale, 2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

Hastie¹,

Kameda²

2005

Psychological Review

371

349

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How should groups make decisions? The authors provide an original evaluation of 9 group decision rules based on their adaptive success in a simulated test bed environment. When the adaptive success standard is applied, the majority and plurality rules fare quite well, performing at levels comparable to much more resource-demanding rules such as an individual judgment averaging rule. The plurality rule matches the computationally demanding Condorcet majority winner that is standard in evaluations of preferential choice. The authors also test the results from their theoretical analysis in a behavioral study of nominal human group decisions, and the essential findings are confirmed empirically. The conclusions of the present analysis support the popularity of majority and plurality rules in truth-seeking group decisions.Human societies rely on groups to make many important decisions. There is a deep-seated belief that groups are more accurate and more just than individuals. This belief is based on the commonsense notion that a group has more problem-solving resources than any individual member because "several heads are better than one." The belief also depends on the assumption that the group process is effective at eliciting and integrating its members' beliefs and preferences. The most popular decision rule in groups of all types is the majority rule. The majority rule has many virtues: It is "transparent" and the easiest of all social decision rules to execute; it is based on a simple principle of equal participation and equal power; it encourages the expression of sincere personal beliefs, rather than conformity; and it yields more effective problem solutions than typical (and sometimes even most accurate) members could achieve. The present article is an exploration of the capacity of the majority rule and the closely related plurality rule to produce accurate judgments.The majority rule is popular across the full spectrum of human groups from hunter-gatherer tribal societies (Boehm, 1996;Boyd & Richerson, 1985;Wilson, 1994) to modern industrial democracies (Mueller, 1989). Certainly, in ad hoc Western groups, it seems to be the decision rule most frequently adopted to make formal social choices in popular elections, legislatures, and committees. The second most popular explicit procedure in committees is an autocratic "leader decides" rule (e.g., Smith & Bliege-Bird, 2000). However, when no explicit decision rule is adopted by a group or when a designated leader appears to make the group's decision, the implicit decision rule is usually still essentially a majority rule (cf. Davis, 1973Davis, , 1982Kerr, Stasser, & Davis, 1979;Stasser, Kerr, & Davis, 1980). Even when a small group has an explicit rule other than a majority rule, the largest initial faction, that is, the plurality, is usually the ultimate winner (cf. There are several versions of majoritarian rules used in human societies. The most popular version in America is a majority-plurality rule in which the candidate that receives the most votes wins ...

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“…Empirical results show that groups are often more accurate than average individuals (Garcia-Retamero, Takezawa, & Gigerenzer, 2008;Hastie & Kameda, 2005;Hill, 1982;Kameda & Nakanishi, 2002;Kerr & Tindale, 2004). For instance, even when individuals' quantitative judgments are systematically biased, the performance of the average 1 The resulting (sample-based) cue ordering when using the validity algorithm should not be confused with the ecological validity ordering, as Dougherty, Franco-Watkins, and Thomas (2008) did.…”

Section: Does Social Learning Improve the Performance Of Cue Order Lementioning

confidence: 99%

Does Imitation Benefit Cue Order Learning?

García‐Retamero

Takezawa

Gigerenzer

2009

Experimental Psychology

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Abstract. Inferences are often based on uncertain cues, and the accuracy of such inferences depends on the order in which the cues are searched. Previous research has shown that people and computers progress only slowly in individual learning of cue orderings through feedback. A clue to how people (as opposed to computers) solve this problem is social learning: By exchanging information with others, people can learn which cues are relevant and the order in which they should be considered. By means of simulation, we demonstrate that imitate-the-best and imitate-themajority speed up individual learning, whereas a third social rule, the Borda rule, does not. Imitate-the-best also leads to a steep increase in learning after a single social exchange, to cue orders that are more accurate than ecological validity, and to faster learning than when individuals gain the learning experience of all other group members but learn without social exchange. In two experiments, we find that people speed up cue learning in a similar way when provided with social information, both when they obtain the information from the experimenter or in free discussions with others.

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Group Performance and Decision Making

Cited by 1,058 publications

References 267 publications

Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus

Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

Does Imitation Benefit Cue Order Learning?

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