Page 266 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups 249

Understanding What Can Go Wrong During Decision Making

Groups can make better decisions than individuals, but they don’t always reach their
potential, even when they achieve consensus. Of 10 groups that achieved consensus,
Burleson found that eight of them made better decisions than their individual mem-
bers acting alone, but two of them produced worse decisions. 66
Wood observed several factors that impede decision making, including members
who don’t have the needed skills or information and members whose social needs
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prevent them from attending to the task. Poor operating procedures, including the
failure to provide structure for the decision- making process and failure to test for con-
sensus, hurt decision quality. Finally, adhering to ascribed (external) status character-
istics impaired open and honest communication, which prevented critical thinking.
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Very cohesive groups with high- performance expectations perform well, and groups
that approach decision making systematically make better decisions than groups that
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do not. Group interaction itself can promote collective inferential error if members
accept unusual cases as representative (i.e., overgeneralizing), passively accept spe-
cialized knowledge without questioning it, or create hypothetical scenarios with no
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basis in fact. Group decisions are also affected by a member’s emergent expertise.
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When a member seems to be an expert on a particular topic, particularly if that mem-
ber’s expertise is noticeably greater than that of the others, that “expert’s” opinions
carry more weight.
Three phenomena pose particular problems for effective decision making: hid-
den profiles, group polarization, and groupthink.

Hidden Profiles
Sometimes, group members may not actually exchange the information they have as
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individuals or do a good job of using the information they do share. A hidden Hidden Profile
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profile occurs when members collectively hold the information they need to make the When the information
best decision, but some of that information is held privately; only by pooling the infor- members hold
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mation can the best decision be made. In other words, if members chose to share all collectively favors the
the relevant information they hold privately, the group would find the best solution. best decision, but
Unfortunately, members freely discuss information they already know in common but some of the
tend to hold onto their own unique information without sharing it. As groups move information is held in
away from hidden profiles and become willing to share what each member knows private; only by
separately, they make better decisions. Shared information is socially validating and pooling their
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thereby carries more weight in a discussion. 76 information can the
best decision be
This is consistent with Klocke’s findings. Klocke noted that groups tend to expe- made.
rience two information- processing biases: a preference bias (in favor of the initial
preferences of members) and a shared information bias (in favor of information all
members hold). When members appreciated their own and the other members’
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unique information, as well as information that was inconsistent with their initial
preferences, the quality of the group decision was higher. Information- sharing seems
to improve when groups are smaller and members have little common information.
Apparently, this forces members to share what they have. 78

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