Effects of group size and item type in the "group shift" effect.

Recent research on the "risky shift" phenomenon in group decision-making has uncovered evidence of items which evoke cautious shifts instead of risky shifts. R. Brown's social comparison version of the value hypothesis predicts that (a) the magnitude of both risky and cautious shifts will increase with group size when group members are randomly selected from a normally distributed population; and (b) on risk-evoking items the magnitude of s's risky shift should be inversely related to his relative riskiness position in the group; on caution-evoking items the magnitude of cautious shift should be directly related to s's riskiness position. 180 male undergraduates were divided into groups of 2-5 ss and given risk- and caution-evoking items on a questionnaire. Basic predictions were supported. The relative risk position factor accounted for a large proportion of the experimental variance (42-54%). (french summary) (31 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)