Joining a group diverts regret and responsibility away from the individual

Abstract

It has recently been proposed that a key motivation for joining groups is the protection from the negative consequences of undesirable outcomes. To test this claim, we investigated how experienced outcomes triggering loss and regret impacted people's tendency to decide alone or join a group, and how decisions differed when voluntarily made alone versus in group. Replicated across two experiments, participants ( n = 125 and n = 496) selected whether to play alone or contribute their vote to a group decision. Next, they chose between two lotteries with different probabilities of winning and losing. The higher the negative outcome, the more participants switched from deciding alone to with others. When joining a group to choose the lottery, choices were less driven by outcome and regret anticipation. Moreover, negative outcomes experienced alone, not part of a group vote, led to worse subsequent choices than positive outcomes. These results suggest that the protective shield of the collective reduces the influence of negative emotions that may help individuals re-evaluate past choices.

Shared responsibility decreases the sense of agency in the human brain

“…Our findings showed that people’s subjective reports of responsibility varied according to social context, with greater responsibility reported when making decisions privately compared to when making decisions with others. This is in line with previous studies that show that people feel less control, responsibility and regret when acting with others [3,14,16,17]. Reported responsibility varied with group size, with more responsibility reported in Dyads vs in a Group of five.…”

“…Indeed, when people assign credit to contributors in a team, they tend to overestimate their own contribution and over attribute a team's success to their own abilities, effort and merit [2]. Conversely, when outcomes are poor, the collective context allows us to distance ourselves from regret [3] and offload blame onto others [4]. Teams are more likely to violate rules than individuals [5] and, correspondingly, people find it harder to punish groups (vs individuals) that have violated a social norm [4].…”

Distinct neurocomputational mechanisms support informational and socially normative conformity

“…Seeking elevated accuracy [ 46 ] is perhaps the most popularly recognised motive but only one among many other motives. Other motives include diffusion of responsibility and regret [ 47 ] and equality [ 2 ]. Future research could help determine whether and to what extent our participants were driven by these various motives.…”

Stage 1 Registered Report: How responsibility attributions to self and others relate to outcome ownership in group decisions.

“…In many everyday situations, whether in the workplace or with our family and friends, responsibility for outcomes is shared among several individuals because these outcomes stem from collective decisions. Collective decisions can reduce the burden of individual responsibility 3,4 , because people feel less responsible when performing an action as a group than when acting alone [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] .…”