Twenty-Five Years of Groupthink Theory and Research: Lessons from the Evaluation of a Theory

Turner, Marlene E.; Pratkanis, Anthony R.

doi:10.1006/obhd.1998.2756

Cited by 209 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Group discussions are known to be a double-edged sword (39). Phenomena such as group think, interpersonal competition, social loafing, and obedience to authority can compromise group accuracy (40)(41)(42), yet groups are known to outperform individuals across a range of tasks (7,43). It will thus be important to compare the relative gains (or declines) in accuracy that these mechanisms afford across medical diagnostic contexts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boosting medical diagnostics by pooling independent judgments

Kurvers

Herzog

Hertwig

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

157

140

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Collective intelligence refers to the ability of groups to outperform individual decision makers when solving complex cognitive problems. Despite its potential to revolutionize decision making in a wide range of domains, including medical, economic, and political decision making, at present, little is known about the conditions underlying collective intelligence in real-world contexts. We here focus on two key areas of medical diagnostics, breast and skin cancer detection. Using a simulation study that draws on large real-world datasets, involving more than 140 doctors making more than 20,000 diagnoses, we investigate when combining the independent judgments of multiple doctors outperforms the best doctor in a group. We find that similarity in diagnostic accuracy is a key condition for collective intelligence: Aggregating the independent judgments of doctors outperforms the best doctor in a group whenever the diagnostic accuracy of doctors is relatively similar, but not when doctors' diagnostic accuracy differs too much. This intriguingly simple result is highly robust and holds across different group sizes, performance levels of the best doctor, and collective intelligence rules. The enabling role of similarity, in turn, is explained by its systematic effects on the number of correct and incorrect decisions of the best doctor that are overruled by the collective. By identifying a key factor underlying collective intelligence in two important real-world contexts, our findings pave the way for innovative and more effective approaches to complex real-world decision making, and to the scientific analyses of those approaches.collective intelligence | groups | medical diagnostics | dermatology | mammography C ollective intelligence, that is, the ability of groups to outperform individual decision makers when solving complex cognitive problems, is a powerful approach for boosting decision accuracy (1-7). However, despite its potential to boost accuracy in a wide range of contexts, including lie detection, political forecasting, investment decisions, and medical decision making (8-14), little is known about the conditions that underlie the emergence of collective intelligence in real-world domains. Which features of decision makers and decision contexts favor the emergence of collective intelligence? Which decision-making rules permit this potential to be harnessed? We here provide answers to these important questions in the domain of medical diagnostics.Our work builds on recent findings on combining decisions, a research paradigm known as "two heads better than one" (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). In their seminal study, Bahrami et al. (15) showed that two individuals permitted to communicate freely while engaging in a visual perception task, achieved better results than the better of the two did alone. Koriat (17) subsequently demonstrated that this collective intelligence effect also emerges in the absence of communication when the "maximum-confidence slating algorithm" (hereafter called confidence rule) is used and th...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boosting medical diagnostics by pooling independent judgments

Kurvers

Herzog

Hertwig

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

157

140

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, decades of research by social psychologists have provided explanations for the less-than-ideal performance of most social groups. "Process loss" saps the resources provided by individual members through coordination failures (Steiner, 1972), social loafing (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979), groupthink (Janis, 1972;Turner & Pratkanis, 1998), and interpersonal competition (McGrath, 1984).…”

Section: Accuracy As a Criterion For Good Group Decision Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

Hastie¹,

Kameda²

2005

Psychological Review

384

349

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How should groups make decisions? The authors provide an original evaluation of 9 group decision rules based on their adaptive success in a simulated test bed environment. When the adaptive success standard is applied, the majority and plurality rules fare quite well, performing at levels comparable to much more resource-demanding rules such as an individual judgment averaging rule. The plurality rule matches the computationally demanding Condorcet majority winner that is standard in evaluations of preferential choice. The authors also test the results from their theoretical analysis in a behavioral study of nominal human group decisions, and the essential findings are confirmed empirically. The conclusions of the present analysis support the popularity of majority and plurality rules in truth-seeking group decisions.Human societies rely on groups to make many important decisions. There is a deep-seated belief that groups are more accurate and more just than individuals. This belief is based on the commonsense notion that a group has more problem-solving resources than any individual member because "several heads are better than one." The belief also depends on the assumption that the group process is effective at eliciting and integrating its members' beliefs and preferences. The most popular decision rule in groups of all types is the majority rule. The majority rule has many virtues: It is "transparent" and the easiest of all social decision rules to execute; it is based on a simple principle of equal participation and equal power; it encourages the expression of sincere personal beliefs, rather than conformity; and it yields more effective problem solutions than typical (and sometimes even most accurate) members could achieve. The present article is an exploration of the capacity of the majority rule and the closely related plurality rule to produce accurate judgments.The majority rule is popular across the full spectrum of human groups from hunter-gatherer tribal societies (Boehm, 1996;Boyd & Richerson, 1985;Wilson, 1994) to modern industrial democracies (Mueller, 1989). Certainly, in ad hoc Western groups, it seems to be the decision rule most frequently adopted to make formal social choices in popular elections, legislatures, and committees. The second most popular explicit procedure in committees is an autocratic "leader decides" rule (e.g., Smith & Bliege-Bird, 2000). However, when no explicit decision rule is adopted by a group or when a designated leader appears to make the group's decision, the implicit decision rule is usually still essentially a majority rule (cf. Davis, 1973Davis, , 1982Kerr, Stasser, & Davis, 1979;Stasser, Kerr, & Davis, 1980). Even when a small group has an explicit rule other than a majority rule, the largest initial faction, that is, the plurality, is usually the ultimate winner (cf. There are several versions of majoritarian rules used in human societies. The most popular version in America is a majority-plurality rule in which the candidate that receives the most votes wins ...

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“…In performing reviews, the panel was repeatedly cautioned about: outcome bias, where knowledge of the poor outcome can lead to a retrospective harsh judgement [30]; hindsight bias, an exaggerated belief that a poor outcome would have been predicted [31]; and group-think, where groups make irrational decisions given a subconscious desire to agree with others) [32]. The two-stage review process was specifically designed to address the latter bias.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) on accidental awareness during general anaesthesia: protocol, methods and analysis of data

et al. 2014

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SummaryAccidental awareness during general anaesthesia with recall is a potentially distressing complication of general anaesthesia that can lead to psychological harm. The 5th National Audit Project was designed to investigate the reported incidence, predisposing factors, causality and impact of accidental awareness. A nationwide network of local co-ordinators across all UK and Irish public hospitals reported all new patient reports of accidental awareness to a central database, using a system of monthly anonymised reporting over a calendar year. The database collected the details of the reported event, anaesthetic and surgical technique, and any sequelae. These reports were categorised into main types by a multidisciplinary panel, using a formalised process of analysis. The main categories of accidental awareness were: certain or probable; possible; during sedation; on or from the intensive care unit; could not be determined; unlikely; drug errors; and statement only. The degree of evidence to support the categorisation was also defined for each report. Patient experience and sequelae were categorised using current tools or modifications of such. The 5th National Audit Project methodology may be used to assess new reports of accidental awareness during general anaesthesia in a standardised manner, especially for the develop-1078

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Twenty-Five Years of Groupthink Theory and Research: Lessons from the Evaluation of a Theory

Cited by 209 publications

References 35 publications

Boosting medical diagnostics by pooling independent judgments

Boosting medical diagnostics by pooling independent judgments

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

The 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) on accidental awareness during general anaesthesia: protocol, methods and analysis of data

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