Intragroup decision making in intergroup negotiation: Majority/minority effects and hawkishness of member preferences.

Participants took part in an intergroup negotiation. In the first stage participants recorded their individual preferences (i.e., which of several possible options they should strive to achieve during the negotiation) for each negotiation issue. In the second stage they repeated this process as part of a 3-person cooperative group in preparation for the negotiation task. Our results show that the decision aggregation of negotiation teams is driven by 2 factors: The majority/minority status of the members advocating a given option and the extent to which the option advocated by a member was more hawkish (i.e., advantageous to the ingroup) than that of fellow members. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Democracy under uncertainty: The wisdom of crowds and the free-rider problem in group decision making.

We introduce a game theory model of individual decisions to cooperate by contributing personal resources to group decisions versus by free riding on the contributions of other members. In contrast to most public-goods games that assume group returns are linear in individual contributions, the present model assumes decreasing marginal group production as a function of aggregate individual contributions. This diminishing marginal returns assumption is more realistic and generates starkly different predictions compared to the linear model. One important implication is that, under most conditions, there exist equilibria where some, but not all, members of a group contribute, even with completely self-interested motives. An agent-based simulation confirmed the individual and group advantages of the equilibria in which behavioral asymmetry emerges from a game structure that is a priori perfectly symmetric for all agents (all agents have the same payoff function and action space but take different actions in equilibria). A behavioral experiment demonstrated that cooperators and free riders coexist in a stable manner in groups performing with the nonlinear production function. A collateral result demonstrated that, compared to a dictatorial decision scheme guided by the best member in a group, the majority/plurality decision rules can pool information effectively and produce greater individual net welfare at equilibrium, even if free riding is not sanctioned. This is an original proof that cooperation in ad hoc decision-making groups can be understood in terms of self-interested motivations and that, despite the free-rider problem, majority/plurality decision rules can function robustly as simple, efficient social decision heuristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of confidence and motivation on susceptibility to informational social influence.

"The general hypothesis… was that the individual's acceptance of the judgments of others varies as function of: (a) the relative confidence he has in his own judgment; and (b) his motivational orientation toward the task with which he was confronted… . conformity (as measured through a modified Crutchfield apparatus) was found to: (a) increase as the subjective probability that S was receiving information from the others increased; and (b) decrease as the frequency of errors made by the 'majority' increased. Motivational effects induced by the instruction that the task reflected the individual's intelligence resulted in a decrease in… [errors]." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual expectations for group decision processes: Evidence for overestimation of majority influence.

Individuals experience numerous group decision situations during their lives. As a result, they may develop accurate expectations of the social processes and effects of context on group decision situations. Four decision-making situations were constructed that were expected to elicit different group decision processes. Individuals were presented with these hypothetical scenarios in which group size and the preferences of group members varied systematically. Participants’ expectations were elicited from their predictions regarding which alternative the group would choose on the basis of the information presented. The comparison of these judgments with the predicted decision distributions derived from models of group decision making showed that participants had a general sensitivity to changes in contexts, but that they overestimated the effect of the majority opinion on the final decisions. Individuals may have general notions of how groups make decisions but are less sensitive to the subtleties involved in the process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dynamical evolutionary psychology: Individual decision rules and emergent social norms.

A new theory integrating evolutionary and dynamical approaches is proposed. Following evolutionary models, psychological mechanisms are conceived as conditional decision rules designed to address fundamental problems confronted by human ancestors, with qualitatively different decision rules serving different problem domains and individual differences in decision rules as a function of adaptive and random variation. Following dynamical models, decision mechanisms within individuals are assumed to unfold in dynamic interplay with decision mechanisms of others in social networks. Decision mechanisms in different domains have different dynamic outcomes and lead to different sociospatial geometries. Three series of simulations examining trade-offs in cooperation and mating decisions illustrate how individual decision mechanisms and group dynamics mutually constrain one another, and offer insights about gene-culture interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnic Group Identification and Group Evaluation Among Minority and Majority Groups: Testing the Multiculturalism Hypothesis.

Following social identity theory, the author hypothesized that members of minority groups are more likely than majority group members to endorse multiculturalism more strongly and assimilationist thinking less strongly. In addition, the multiculturalism hypothesis proposes that the more minority groups endorse the ideology of multiculturalism (or assimilationism), the more (or less) likely they will be to identify with their ethnic in-group and to show positive in-group evaluation. In contrast, the more majority group members endorse multiculturalism (or assimilationism), the less (or more) likely they are to identify with their ethnic group and to show negative out-group evaluation. Results from 4 studies (correlational and experimental) provide support for this hypothesis among Dutch and Turkish participants living in the Netherlands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group conversion versus group expansion as modes of change in majority and minority positions: All losses hurt but only some gains gratify.

This study examined reactions to minority and majority positions that were either stable or reversed through group conversion that transformed opponents (supporters) of the minority (majority) into supporters, (opponents) or through group expansion that brought new supporters (opponents) for the minority (majority) into the group. Minorities who became majorities through group expansion, compared with those who changed through group conversion, perceived their supporters and the overall group as significantly more similar to the self, and had significantly higher expectations for future positive interactions within the group. Perception of similarity with the supporters mediated the effect of the experimental conditions on perception of the overall group-self similarity. Implications of changes through conversion and expansion for the functioning of social groups are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group decision making in hidden profile situations: Dissent as a facilitator for decision quality.

The effect of diversity in individual prediscussion preferences on group decision quality was examined in an experiment in which 135 three-person groups worked on a personnel selection case with 4 alternatives. The information distribution among group members constituted a hidden profile (i.e., the correct solution was not identifiable on the basis of the members' individual information and could be detected only by pooling and integrating the members' unique information). Whereas groups with homogeneous suboptimal prediscussion preferences (no dissent) hardly ever solved the hidden profile, solution rates were significantly higher in groups with prediscussion dissent, even if none of these individual prediscussion preferences were correct. If dissent came from a proponent of the correct solution, solution rates were even higher than in dissent groups without such a proponent. The magnitude of dissent (i.e., minority dissent or full diversity of individual preferences) did not affect decision quality. The beneficial effect of dissent on group decision quality was mediated primarily by greater discussion intensity and to some extent also by less discussion bias in dissent groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conflict's consequences: Effects of social motives on postnegotiation creative and convergent group functioning and performance.

Two studies tested the effects of social motives during negotiation on postnegotiation group performance. In both experiments, a prosocial or a proself motivation was induced, and participants negotiated in 3-person groups about a joint market. In Experiment 1, groups subsequently performed an advertisement task. Consistent with the authors' predictions, results showed that proself groups performed worse on the convergent aspects of this task but better on the divergent aspects than prosocial groups. In Experiment 2, the authors manipulated social motive and negotiation (negotiation vs. no negotiation), and groups performed a creativity task (requiring divergent performance) or a planning task (requiring convergent performance). Proself groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than prosocial groups on the creativity task, whereas prosocial groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than proself groups on the planning task, and these effects only occurred when the task was preceded by group negotiation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a model of social influence that explains minority student integration into the scientific community.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 103(1) of Journal of Educational Psychology (see record 2011-01898-001). The name of the author Mica Estrada-Hollenbeck should have read Mica Estrada. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Students from several ethnic minority groups are underrepresented in the sciences, indicating that minority students more frequently drop out of the scientific career path than nonminority students. Viewed from a perspective of social influence, this pattern suggests that minority students do not integrate into the scientific community at the same rate as nonminority students. Kelman (1958, 2006) described a tripartite integration model of social influence by which a person orients to a social system. To test whether this model predicts integration into the scientific community, we conducted analyses of data from a national panel of minority science students. A structural equation model framework showed that self-efficacy (operationalized to be consistent with Kelman's rule orientation) predicted student intentions to pursue a scientific career. However, when identification as a scientist and internalization of values were added to the model, self-efficacy became a poorer predictor of intention. Additional mediation analyses supported the conclusion that while having scientific self-efficacy is important, identifying with and endorsing the values of the social system reflect a deeper integration and more durable motivation to persist as a scientist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pride in group performance and group-task motivation.

This experiment tested the propositions that pride in one's group results from the members' perceptions of effective task performance of the group as a whole and is directly associated with high motivation toward the assigned task of the group. 25 3-man groups assigned to work on a simulated Air Defense task were distributed among 5 experimental conditions. The measure of task motivation was the amount of task-oriented discussion during a "break" period. "Evidence is cited supporting the hypothesis that the high group-task motivation results from a perception of interdependence among the group members with respect to the attainment of reward." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information sampling and group decision making: The effects of an advocacy decision procedure and task experience.

Group discussions tend to focus on information that was previously known by all members (shared information) rather than information known by only 1 member (unshared information). If the shared information implies a suboptimal alternative, this sampling bias is associated with inaccurate group decisions. The present study examines the impact of 2 factors on information exchange and decision quality: (a) an advocacy group decision procedure versus unstructured discussion and (b) task experience. Results show that advocacy groups discussed both more shared and unshared information than free-discussion groups. Further, with increasing experience, more unshared information was mentioned in advocacy groups. In contrast, there was no such increase in unstructured discussions. Yet advocacy groups did not significantly improve their decision quality with experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating advice and experience: Learning and decision making with social and nonsocial cues.

When making decisions, people typically gather information from both social and nonsocial sources, such as advice from others and direct experience. This research adapted a cognitive learning paradigm to examine the process by which people learn what sources of information are credible. When participants relied on advice alone to make decisions, their learning of source reliability proceeded in a manner analogous to traditional cue learning processes and replicated the established learning phenomena. However, when advice and nonsocial cues were encountered together as an established phenomenon, blocking (ignoring redundant information) did not occur. Our results suggest that extant cognitive learning models can accommodate either advice or nonsocial cues in isolation. However, the combination of advice and nonsocial cues (a context more typically encountered in daily life) leads to different patterns of learning, in which mutually supportive information from different types of sources is not regarded as redundant and may be particularly compelling. For these situations, cognitive learning models still constitute a promising explanatory tool but one that must be expanded. As such, these findings have important implications for social psychological theory and for cognitive models of learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cooperation in social dilemmas and the need to belong: The moderating effect of group size.

The present research examined the effects of the need to belong and group size on cooperation in a public goods dilemma. On the basis of previous research (R. F. Baumeister & M. R. Leary, 1995), it was expected that those high in the need to belong would cooperate most. In addition, it was expected that the need to belong would predict cooperation for large-group members but not for small-group members. Analyses supported both hypotheses. Furthermore, individual differences in the need to belong were positively correlated with frustration about individuals' (cooperative) decision, a feeling believed to emerge from the felt uncertainty over whether cooperation would be reciprocated by others, the conflicting motivations of the need to belong and personal self-interest, or both. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Minority group belonging, social preference, and the marginal personality.

"… marginal Jews… nonmarginal Jews, and… Presbyterians of North European background" selected 1 of 16 photographs with whom they would prefer to have lunch. "Presbyterians… preferred North Europeans and Mediterraneans, nonmarginal Jews preferred Jews, and marginal Jews preferred Mediterraneans… . A measure of… security failed to show differences between the three groups. However, marginal Jews who preferred North Europeans… tended to be less secure than those who favored Mediterraneans… [suggesting] that marginal Jews [who] tend to identify… with non-Jewish groups which do not reject them… do not maintain the tension which is associated with identifying with an aggressor." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of biological and social motivation on schizophrenic reaction time.

Reaction times of schizophrenic and normal Ss were determined under instructions to respond as fast as possible to a buzzer signal. Half of the Ss were retested immediately under the same conditions, while the other half were shocked on the responding finger simultaneously with the buzzer. Schizophrenics' RTs improved significantly under shock conditions. Disturbances in schizophrenic RT are "partially accounted for by defective social motivation and… a biological deficit may be involved in the reactions of more chronic schizophrenics." 21 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeking conversion versus advocating tolerance in the pursuit of social change.

In 2 studies, the authors examined reactions to social change effected by minorities’ successful increase of tolerance for diversity within a group or conversion of a group to the minority position. Minorities who increased tolerance for diversity, compared with those who converted a group to their own position, identified more strongly with the group (Study 1). Study 2 replicated these findings. Additionally, it showed that majorities disidentified less from the group when majorities lost their dominant position due to the group’s increased tolerance for diversity than when majorities lost their dominant position due to the group’s conversion to the minority position. Thus, minority-effected social change left a group stronger when that change increased the group’s tolerance than when the group experienced conversion. Expectations that differences within a group would be regulated through social conflict (vs. conciliation) mediated the effect of the mode of change on group identification. Motives for minorities’ pursuit of social change through tolerance of diversity versus group conversion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intertrial effects of immediate self-committal in a continuous social influence situation.

A perceptual task consisting of the judgment of dot numerosity on tachistoscopically presented slides was presented to Ss. Present in the experimental room as each S was being tested was a "role-player" who also made a judgment. In one group the "role-player's" judgment preceded the S's judgment; in another, it followed the S's judgment; and in a third group, the S was required to judge the stimulus both before and after the "role-player." The results show that "once an S has expressed a judgment of a stimulus, he is generally reluctant to change his response to any great degree. The S may still be heavily influenced in the situation, however, the effects of which are reflected in subsequent committal responses." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interacting effects of control, motivation, group practice, and problem difficulty on attempted leadership.

"Fifty-one groups of five subjects each were studied on ten brief trials to examine the effects of differing motivation and amount of control in the tendency to attempt leadership in a group situation." Results suggest "that a member's attempted leadership is higher, the higher his control and the higher the group's motivation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)