Lecture 14

Question 1

Why would decisions be taken in groups?

Answer 1

• Different stakeholders are in play and all needed to be represented
• On Who wants to be a millionaire, they found that friends were right 65% of the time, but the audience was right 91% = idea of swarm intelligence that favours us at a collective level
• Anecdotal evidence though, can be flawed

Question 2

What is Steiner’s taxonomy?

Answer 2

• Relationship between individual performance and resulting group performance
• Additive tasks e.g pulling rope = each individual contributes, but group results is better than the best individual alone
• Compensatory tasks e.g estimation tasks, group performance should be as good as average
• Disjunctive (eureka) tasks e.g puzzles where there is only one right answer, group performance is as good as the best
• Disjunctive (non-eureka) tasks e.g politics where is no ‘right’ decision, group performance is worse than the best
• Conjunctive task e.g mountain climbing, group performance is only as good as the weakest

Question 3

What is a eureka-type task?

Answer 3

• 4-person groups ppts have to find a rule involving standard playing cards and have to test their hypothesis
• Ppt first write down their individual hyp, then discuss for a group hypothesis, then the group selects a card, feedback on each selected card provided
• With short discussion, best individual ppts were better than group, group hyp as good as second best individual
• With 10 extra minutes, groups were as good as the best
• These tasks depend on the best members knowledge and how it is communicated

Question 4

What was Stasser’s theory with Eureka tasks and hidden profiles?

Answer 4

• Groups tend to discuss shared knowledge: 45% is shared but 18% is individual, this somewhat improves with a moderator
• Matters when situation members have info that no one else has e.g hiring a candidate: A is known by the members differently as well as the base data, so he has 4 criteria as to why he would be hired over B who just has the base information
• Found that 18% vote for A when things are hidden, but 83% when information is shared

Question 5

What are the factors that might facilitate the exchange of individual information?

Answer 5

• High retrieval probabilities: corresponds to how the group is composed (usually shareholders) to raise salience of the decision
• Round robin techniques: contributes to a small amount - everyone in position to speak
• Problem-solving orientation vs outcome
• Knowledge about expertise of other group members - knowing who is in the group

Question 6

What are decisions with no demonstrable solution?

Answer 6

• Usually more accurate than average, but not as good as best member
• Had a sales forecasting task with 5 undergrads on campus who had time-series data provided
• Individuals estimates were collated to a collective estimate, then group makes decision based on one of four principles
• Dictator: best member determined beforehand by group
• Consensus: straightforward discussion with aim of consensus
• Dialectic: discussion of collective estimate
• Delphi: members provides estimates anon in a series of rounds with no face-to-face discussion until consensus
• DV = percent reduction between collective mean vs reality
• All groups techniques yielded more accurate results than simple aggregation
• Groups were able to reliably identify good members
• Dictators tended to change their judgement following group discussions in direction of collective mean

Question 7

How to reach a consensus?

Answer 7

• Groups are able to identify goof members better than chance
• Groups incorporate such identification into their normal group judgment process
• Problems arise if there is a conversational norm that pulls against the correct solution of the task e.g Grice’s conversational norms where people tend to find out more about the person they are talking to
• e.g conjunction error = Linda problem = is she a business woman/business woman & feminist as due to the convo norms and the jist of the question could influence the reader
• Probabilities of a combined event is overestimated
• An incorrect alternative exerts a strong functional pull widely shared in the group so a group member who knows the correct answer might still be persuaded that they misunderstood the question

Question 8

What is brainstorming?

Answer 8

• Using brain to storm a problem
• Principles are deferment of judgement and quantity breeds quality
• Evaluation includes nominal groups vs real groups, and numbers of good ideas
• General pattern is productivity loss in real groups

Question 9

How can we explain this loss with brain storming?

Answer 9

• Motivational loss - social loafing = some members do not say things or pull their weight
• Coordination losses - at which point do we think our performance is highest, they need to work together at their peak performance - needs to know others in the group well

Question 10

Can social loafing be reduced? (study)

Answer 10

• 4 swimmer teams: 2 identifiable contributions, 2 unidentifiable contributions
• DV: racing times taken individually vs in team
• Team-condition: swimmers perform better than as individuals if they knew, if they didn’t, they did worse as a team than individually
• Social loafing: identifiability increases productivity in real groups
• Looked at individual scoring vs collective scoring against real vs nominal groups, the variance in motivational loss was due to the type of group (83%)

Question 11

What is production blocking?

Answer 11

• Explanation for coordination losses
• Ppts seated in booths with coloured lamps: 3 red, 1 green
• 5 exp groups: 1 - real group, 2 - nominal group, 3 - real group simulation, light dependent speaking, 4 - same as three but no loudspeakers (eliminate acoustic and only look at light), 5 - same as 4 but told to disregard lights (can speak when you want)
• In groups 1, 3, and 5 performed at the same level = shows production blocking happens
• 2 & 5 are at the same level where you can speak when you want, as you remember what you wanted to say