Are groups more likely to defer choice than their members?
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2011, Vol 6, Issue 3
Abstract
When faced with a choice, people can normally select no option, i.e., defer choice. Previous research has investigated when and why individuals defer choice, but has almost never looked at these questions when groups of people make choices. Separate reasons predict that groups may be equally likely, more likely, or less likely than individuals to defer choice. We re-analyzed some previously published data and conducted a new experiment to address this question. We found that small groups of people tended to defer choice more often than their members would. Assuming that the groups used a plurality rule but gave additional weight to individual preferences to defer choice allowed the groups’ responses to be predicted quite well. We discuss several possible explanations of these findings.
Authors and Affiliations
Chris M. White, Sebastian Hafenbrädl, Ulrich Hoffrage, Nils Reisen and Jan K. Woike
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP677795
- DOI -
- Views 139
- Downloads 0
Decision-making styles and depressive symptomatology: Development of the Decision Styles Questionnaire
Difficulty making decisions is one of the symptoms of the depressive illness. Previous research suggests that depressed individuals may make decisions that differ from those made by the non-depressed, and that they use s...
Proportion dominance in valuing lives: The role of deliberative thinking
Proportion responding (PR) is the preference for proportionally higher gains, such that the same absolute quantity is valued more as the reference group decreases. This research investigated this kind of proportion PR in...
Genetic testing and risk interpretation: How do women understand lifetime risk results?
Genetic screening for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gives women the opportunity for early detection, surveillance, and intervention. One key feature of genetic testing and counseling is the provision of personal lifetime risk. However...
Validation and invariance across age and gender for the Melbourne Decision-Making Questionnaire in a sample of Portuguese adults
The personal pattern of coping with the stress associated with making decisions characterizes the way an individual makes choices and judgments. The Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ) analyses these personal...
Selective information sampling: Cognitive coherence in evaluation of a novel item
This study investigates the amount and valence of information selected during single item evaluation. One hundred and thirty-five participants evaluated a cell phone by reading hypothetical customers reports. Some partic...