Group Decision Making

Benefits

Having a group make a decision has various potential benefits. Some of these are quite separate from the quality of the decision itself and include having people feel enfranchised, adding to the credibility of the outcome, and distributing responsibility for the result. However, there is also some notion that the decision itself can be better when it is made by a group. A group is able to include a greater variety of viewpoints and thus summon a wider wealth of knowledge. People's idiosyncratic biases, prejudices, and ignorance can be canceled in the aggregate. Another potential benefit is that people will, in a group, be inspired by those around them, increasing their motivation to do well and seeding their own creativity with the ideas of others. Brainstorming procedures are designed to take advantage of the social interactions, with each person's ideas inspired by and building on the suggestions of others, and the outcome cumulated over the wisdom of each participant. There is evidence that aggregated opinions can be remarkably good in what is sometimes called the wisdom-of-crowds-effect, but the way the aggregation occurs is critical in order to avoid the potentially powerful negative effects of group processes.

Social Comparison Effects

One effect of making a decision as a group is that the individuals do not operate independently of each other, but are motivated to compare their positions to others' and to modify their behavior to manage the impression they make on others. These social comparison processes can have various effects on the decision. One factor that it can alter is the level of risk that is tolerated. This finding, generally called the risky shift or, more accurately, the group polarization phenomenon, suggests that group discussion will shift the level of risk generally in the direction that is admired. Thus, if the decision concerns sports, for example, where people are inclined to take risks and admire those who do, the group decision will support greater risk than did the average individual. On the other hand, if it concerns the well-being of children, where caution is preferred, the group will adopt a safer strategy than would individuals. At least part of the explanation for this phenomenon and for it working in both directions is that people wish to be slightly better than the average person, [Page 375]although also not very different from the rest of the group. In the sports scenario, then, discovering during the group discussion that one is actually at about the group average would cause one to slide toward being a bit braver, and so the whole group would move in that direction.

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