Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion.

Abstract

Decision-making groups can potentially benefit from pooling members' information, particularly when members individually have partial and biased information but collectively can compose an unbiased characterization of the decision alternatives. The proposed biased sampling model of group discussion, however, suggests that group members often fail to effectively pool their information because discussion tends to be dominated by (a) information that members hold in common before discussion and (b) information that supports members' existent preferences. In a political caucus simulation, group members individually read candidate descriptions that contained partial information biased against the most favorable candidate and then discussed the candidates as a group. Even though groups could have produced unbiased composites of the candidates through discussion, they decided in favor of the candidate initially preferred by a plurality rather than the most favorable candidate. Group members' pre-and postdiscussion recall of candidate attributes indicated that discussion tended to perpetuate, not to correct, members' distorted pictures of the candidates.

Teamwork in Health Care: Maximizing Collective Intelligence via Inclusive Collaboration and Open Communication

“…For example, research on "the common knowledge effect" highlights the tendency for team members to focus on knowledge that is already commonly shared among group members. This is an effect based in simple probability: if all group members know a piece of information, for example an attribute of a job candidate, that information is more likely to be mentioned during a group discussion than information known by only one member [16]. As a result, uniquely held, important knowledge could go unspoken because members are less likely to think of it.…”

Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

“…This is especially likely if individuals fail to share information that they uniquely possess, focusing instead on discussion of shared information (e.g., Stasser & Titus, 1985). In addition, social flows of information may not improve impression accuracy if the information itself is inaccurate and biased.…”

“…This biased communication will likely confirm and solidify the audience's existing impression of the target. Importantly, delivering such a biased message can also affect the source's own private attitude toward the target, bringing the source's and audience's attitudes into closer agreement.Second, Stasser and colleagues (e.g., Stasser & Titus, 1985) have demonstrated a robust tendency of members of decisionmaking groups to focus their discussion on items of information or evidence that are shared by many group members (compared to information that is possessed by just one or two). We know of no research examining this principle in the domain of gossip, but it is very plausible that when two perceivers with partially overlapping information gossip about a target, they will focus their discussion on the behaviors they both saw (e.g., Joe's wild antics at the party they all attended) at the expense of behaviors of which only one of the perceivers is aware.…”

What Can You Expect? The Influence of Gender Diversity in Dyads on Work Goal Expectancies and Subsequent Work Commitment

“…in terms of work goals) between the self and a work partner when they expected these differences to occur within the dyad prior to the first collaboration. In that case, people can anticipate this situation (see also Ely & Thomas, 2001;Stasser & Titus, 1985). Thus, we will specifically examine whether expectancies based on gender differences can help people to accept work goal differences between themselves and others they have to work with.…”