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)