Exhaustive Guide to Group Decision Making

Principles of Group Decision Making

Foundational Concept: The core philosophy of group decision making is captured by Myers ( $2002$ ): "None of us alone is as smart as all of us together."
Advantages of Groups: * Information Volume: A larger number of people inherently brings more information to the table. * Labor Distribution: More participants allow for a higher volume of work to be completed. * Specialization: Groups enable individuals to focus on tasks they are best at. * Error Checking: Groups can discuss and process information to identify and correct mistakes. * Standards for Deciding: Groups utilize specific standards, such as majority rules, to reach conclusions. * Commitment: Individuals are more likely to follow through on a decision if they were part of the group that made it. * Support/Buy-in: More people involved translates to more broad-based support for the outcome.
Caveat: While these mechanisms provide strength, they can also contribute to making decisions faulty.

The Effectiveness of Group Decision Making

Comparison Studies: Research often compares individual vs. group performance. * Majorie E. Shaw ( $1932$ ): Conducted a study using the missionary/cannibal dilemma. Findings indicated that individuals solved fewer problems than groups. * Glick & Staley ( $2007$ ): Demonstrated that groups are better at diagnosing problems. * Lazonder ( $2005$ ): Found that groups locate information quicker than individuals. * Zimbardo et al. ( $2003$ ): Noted that groups tend to achieve better grades.
Types of Decision Tasks: * Intellective Tasks: These have a demonstrably correct solution (e.g., math problems). Groups are notably superior at these. * Judgmental Tasks: These have no objectively correct answer (e.g., a jury’s verdict). Group members find these more challenging than intellective tasks.
Why Groups Might Be Ineffective: * Shared Information Bias: Over-sampling information that everyone already knows. * Social Loafing: Not everyone pulls their own weight; sometimes work is performed by just a few members. * Manipulation: Conversations and discussions can be manipulated by certain members. * Risk: Groups may lean toward riskier decisions than individuals. * Cohesion Issues: Groupthink and excessive cohesion can stifle critical thinking.

Functional Theory and Phases of Group Decision Making

Functional Theory: Skilled decision-making groups use specific procedures to enhance how they gather, analyze, and weight information. No two groups reach decisions the same way, but effective ones follow a structured anatomy.
Phases of Decision Making: * Orientation: Defining the problem and planning the process. * Discussion: Exchanging and processing information. * Decision: Reaching a final selection. * Implementation: Putting the decision into action. * Post-Mortem: Evaluating the outcome and process.
The Orientation Phase: * Problem Definition: The group must define that a problem exists, what it specifically is, and ensure everyone understands it. * Procedures: Identifying group members, assigning roles, and setting group rules. * Strategy: Setting goals and identifying resources and challenges. * Shared Mental Model: Developing common knowledge, tasks, and expectations. This is helpful for all following phases. * Timing: More time spent in orientation generally leads to greater performance, though groups often neglect this stage.

Brainstorming Rules and Origins

Origin: Created by Alex Osborn ( $1941$ ), an advertising executive. He observed that standard business meetings inhibited the creation of new ideas.
Purpose: To develop rules that open up minds and amass ideas in a spontaneous fashion.
The Five Rules of Brainstorming: 1. Be Expressive: Share any idea that comes to mind. 2. Postpone Evaluation: Do not criticize ideas during the generation phase. 3. Seek Quantity: The more ideas, the better. 4. Piggyback Ideas: Build upon or combine the ideas of others. 5. Equality: Every person and every idea has equal worth.

The Discussion Phase: Collective Information Processing

Collective Information Processing Model: A systematic gathering and review of information required for decision making.
Communication Statistics: * $30\%$ of comments involve expressions of opinions and analysis. * $10\%$ of comments are suggestions. * $10\%$ of comments relate to orientation.
Dialogue vs. Debate: * Dialogue: Enables more facts to be shared and fosters a greater understanding. It makes participants feel more included in the process.
Group Memory Mechanisms: * Collective Memory: The combined storage, encoding, and retrieval capabilities of the group. * Cross-cueing: Group statements trigger and improve the recall of memories in other members. * Transactive Memory: Information is distributed among various members so no one has to remember everything. * Nominal vs. Collaborative Groups: Evaluation of memory performance between groups in name only vs. those actually working together. Loafing and free riding can weaken group memory; meeting minutes are essential records.

Social Decision Schemes

Social Decision Schemes: Strategies (explicit or implicit) used to select a single alternative from proposed options.
Methods of Deciding: * Delegation: An individual or subgroup (oligarchy) makes the decision for the entire group. * Statistical Aggregation/Averaging: Individual decisions are averaged to find a group mean. * Voting/Plurality: Can be public or via secret ballot. The $50\%$ rule is common, but some decisions require higher percentages. * Consensus/Unanimous Decision: Continuous discussion until everyone agrees (e.g., a jury). * Random Choice: Leaving the final decision to chance.

Vroom’s Normative Model of Decision Making

Concept: A theory predicting the effectiveness of decisional procedures across different settings. The procedure must fit the specific problem.
Decisional Procedures: * Decide (Autocratic I & II): The leader solves the problem alone using available information or information obtained from the group. * Consult (Consultative I & II): The leader shares the problem with individuals or the whole group to get input but makes the final decision him/herself. * Facilitate (Group): The leader discusses the problem with the group, and they devise options together. The leader acts as a chairperson without influencing the group toward a specific solution. * Delegate (Group): The leader turns the problem-solving session entirely over to the group.

Problems, Pitfalls, and the Planning Fallacy

The Planning Fallacy: Groups are prone to underestimating the time needed for each phase of a task. While individuals underestimate time, group estimates are often even less accurate.
Difficulty of Discussion: * Poor discussion skills. * "Death by meetings." * Law of Triviality: Wasting time on minor issues while ignoring major ones. * "Muddling through" without a clear path.
Participation Inequality: Discussion is rarely equal. In groups ranging from $3$ to $8$ people, most members' voices are not heard; percentage of participation typically concentrates in a few individuals.

Shared Information Bias and Cognitive Limitations

Shared Information Bias (SIB): The tendency to over-sample shared information. This leads to poor decisions because "hidden profiles" (information known only to one or two people) are ignored.
Causes of SIB: * Informational influence. * Normative influence. * Emphasis on consensus over correctness. * Initial preferences and impression management.
Reducing SIB: Improved via good leadership, increasing group diversity, and using a Group Decision Support System (GDSS).
Cognitive Errors: * Sins of Commission: Belief perseverance (using inaccurate info), Sunk cost bias (refusal to abandon failing actions), Extra-evidentiary bias (using ignored info), and Hindsight bias (overestimating prior knowledge). * Sins of Omission: Base rate bias (ignoring general tendencies) and Fundamental attribution error (over-stressing dispositional causes). * Sins of Imprecision: Availability heuristic (using only readily available info), Conjunctive bias (failing to see that the probability of two events occurring together is lower than one), and Representativeness heuristic (relying on misleading salient aspects).

Implementation and Post-Mortems

Implementation Factors: * People desire closure once a decision is made. * Continuous evaluation is necessary. * Coch and French ( $1948$ ): Studied Harwood Manufacturing Company to find methods to reduce resistance to change. They found that participation is the key to successful implementation. Without it, hostility and turnover increase while efficiency decreases.
Post-Mortem Discussions: * Gathering the group after implementation (rarely done). * Evaluating the decision and the process used. * Looking for and recording "lessons learned" for future use.

Group Polarization

Definition: The tendency for a group to respond in a more extreme way than the individuals would have responded alone. It is not always a move toward the mean.
Shifts: * Risky Shift: Movement toward a riskier decision. * Cautious Shift: Movement toward a more cautious decision.
Theories of Polarization: * Social Comparison Theory. * Persuasive-arguments Theory. * "Risk-supported wins" social decision scheme.

Groupthink: Janis’s Theory

Definition: A distorted thinking style where people seek unanimous agreement despite facts pointing elsewhere. Members try so hard to agree that they make avoidable mistakes.
Historical Examples: Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs op, NASA’s Challenger Shuttle disaster.
Symptoms of Groupthink: * Overestimation: Illusions of invulnerability and morality. * Closed-mindedness: Collective rationalizations and outgroup stereotyping. * Pressures toward Uniformity: Self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, mindguards, and direct pressure on dissenters. * Associated Phenomena: Pluralistic ignorance, Abilene Paradox (Harvey, $1988$ ), and entrapment via sunk costs.
Causes/Antecedents: * Cohesiveness: Cordial relationships and lack of conflict. * Structural Faults: Insulation of the group and leadership control. * Situational Context: High stress from external threats and low self-esteem.
Prevention Strategies: * Limit premature seeking of concurrence via open leadership. * Use Devil’s advocates and subgroup discussions. * Correct misperceptions and biases using effective decision-making techniques.