3) Group Decision Making Flashcards
What is the impact of gender (-composition) on decision making (and on team performance) ?
- Women are more risk-averse than men
- Women are more situationally specific in social preferences (they are not more social than men, but more malleable in their social preferences)
- Women are more averse to competition than men
- diverse boards in companies perform better
Healthy suspicion: The value of low swift trust for information processing and performance of temporary teams
A healthy suspicion toward the contribution of other may ultimately allow better team success in complex decision-making tasks.
Intrateam trust benefits performance outcomes
BUT being suspicious about each other inputs may prevent an over-reliance on simplified strategies (that may lead to damaging decisions.)
Swift Trust
The cognitive process that emphasizes belief in their party’s capability, reliability and dependability
Distrust
Negative expectations about others contribution
(Dis-) Advantages of Groups over Individuals in DM
- More accurate forecasts (i.e. prediction markets)
- More creative ideas
- Groups receive higher scores on academic tests
- Recall information more accurately
VS
- Evidence that the superiority of groups is not a given
(Bay of Pigs, Challenger Explosion)
Perfect calibration diagnosticity
In a simple aggregation process, a J (the number of estimators) increases, the average will tend toward PCD (=accurate representation of the true state of affairs)
Median Voter Theorem
- When member preferences are single peaked
- Each member has a single best point along the response continuum
- Median of the members’ initial preferences is the most stable outcome
Mode (as aggregation procedure)
Evidence that it does very well
- Majority models come close to optimal performance when group member expertise is not knowable
- Reflect social sharedness at the preference level
- Amplify in the group distributions those response tendencies that are prevalent at the individual level
Aggregation with limited information exchange
1) Delphi Technique
2) Prediction Markets
3) Judge Advisor Systems
Delphi Technique
- ) Group of experts makes a series of estimates, rankings, idea lists etc.
- ) Facilitator compiles the list of member responses and summarizes them in a meaningful way
- ) Summaries are given back to the group members and they can revise their initial estimates
• Typically anonymous group members
–> Allows information to be shared while avoiding conformity pressure or undue influence by high-status members
Do better than individuals and as least as good as face to face groups
Prediction Markets
- Mutual social influences can occur
* Very dynamic, continuous aggregation process
Judge Advisor Systems (JAS)
AND Egocentric advice discounting
1) Judge is responsible for final decision but receives suggestions from advisors
They discount other opinions much less when
- Advisor is known expert
- task is complex
- financial incentive to be accurate
- They trust the advisor
They use it more in unfamiliar territory and learn to discount un-confident opinions
- -> Anchoring and adjustment
- -> Information Advantage
- -> Instance of General Egocentric Bias
Social Sharedness
Shared common cognition that are task relevant have a greater influence than the not shared ones
The greater the sharedness, the greater the probability of the information influencing the decision.
A shift in context and thus to inappropriateness of the cognition can lead to a poorer outcome.
Group Consensus as Combining Preferences
Combinatorial Approach
1) Focus on the distribution of initial member preferences and how they can get combined
–> Social Decision Scheme Theory
Assumes that each member has particular preferred option and set of alternatives is known by group
Can be used to describe or prescribe group behaviour during decision-making
–> Basic Aggregation Model
2) Group consensus model for continuous response dimensions
Assumes that the amount of influence of a particular member is an inverse exponential function of the sum of the distances from that member’s position to all other members’ positions
Group Consensus Through Information Processing
1) Hidden Profile
= information held by only one (or a few) member and not shared with the group
o Shared Information Effect
- Groups perform better if their member share their unique knowledge
2) Information Asymmetries Model
Categorizes the various conditions that lead to poor information sharing into:
- Negotiation Focus
- Discussion Bias
- Evaluation Bias
How do you increase the likelihood that (all) information is shared?
- Groups have record of all information present during discussion
- Accuracy or problem-solving orientation share more unique information than groups with a consensus orientation
- Norm of information sharing
- Leader to encourage information exchange
- Instructing members to avoid forming initial preferences or impressions
- Transactive Memory System where certain group members are responsible for certain types of information
Why do groups outperform individuals?
(1) Shared Conceptual System
Enables realization when proposed answer is correct
- -> Truth Wins: Any group has at least one member with the correct answer
- -> Truth Supported Wins: At least two members must have the correct answer
(2) Shared Task Representations
any task relevant concept, norm, perspective, or cognitive process that is shared by most or all of the group
Shared motivations in group
1) Ingroup Bias
- Inter-Individual – Intergroup Discontinuity Effect
2) Motivated Information Processing in Groups Model (MIP-G)
- High vs. low epistemic motivation
- Pro-social vs. pro-self motivation
Both needed to perform optimal, as predicted by the model
Groups tend to be most accurate when?
o Members hold diverse perspectives
o Members are open to diverse opinions
o Groups are composed of wiser members
o Members are highly motivated for the group
o Only incentive for being as accurate as possible
Why do terrorist radicalize?
= absolute ideologies and violent practices
- Grievance
- Radicalization
= long lasting process during which organizational recourses are created for groups more prone to adopt violent repertoires and fundamentalist ideologies
Rational Radicalization
As the process is explained by conventional wisdom
Occurs when groups adopt terrorism because they consider it the policy most likely to advance their goals
Two rational processes
- Logical Deduction
- Learning (Perceived as most effective alternative)
Irrational Radicalization
When groups continue to use terrorism despite evidence of their fruitility, justifying ineffective behavior
Although it’s often irrational, radicalization is not random
Groupthink
Mode of thinking that persons engage in
- when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to
- override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action
Antecedents of Groupthink
- External Threat
- Group is homogenous
- partial leadership
- Lack of decision-making procedures
- Group Insulation
Groupthink Symptoms
Stereotyped adversary Inherent morality Illusory unaminity and unvulnerability Collective Rationalizations Censorship
Defective Decision Making
Incomplete survey of objectives
Discounting alternatives
Selective information bias
Failure to examine risks
Diversity’s Role in DM
can be good or bad
Information Processing = COnsiders diversity advantageous
Social Categorization = diversity bad as it leads to sub group division
Also depends on the type of Diversity (Surface or deep level)
Moderated by
(positive) diversity climate In the organization
Timing
Faultline (Distribution)
Mental Models
Individual Situation Representations Will overlap with the one's from team member (shared MM) Mediated by: Coordination Communication Cooperation
