Twenty questions: efficiency in problem solving as a function of size of group.

Taylor, Donald W.; Faust, William L.

doi:10.1037/h0054376

Cited by 115 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…This includes decisions based on unanimous, majority, and truth-wins group decision rules (see Condorcet 1785Condorcet /1994Smoke & Zajonc, 1962); disjunctive tasks (Steiner, 1972) where a success of only one member is sufficient to achieve a collective goal (e.g., risk-monitoring, resource-finding, and other -Eureka problems‖: see Kameda & Tamura, 2007;Laughlin, 1980;Lorge & Solomon, 1955;Taylor & Faust, 1952); and additive tasks (Steiner, 1972) where members' inputs are summed to determine an overall group performance (e.g., group estimation by averaging, physical tasks as exemplified by a tug of war: see Hastie, 1986;Ingham, Levinger, Graves & Peckham, 1974;Kravitz & Martin 1986). The only clear exceptions to this generalization are conjunctive tasks (Steiner, 1972) where the -weakest link‖ member determines the overall group performance and more members mean poorer performance, and synergistic tasks where the group production function would be positively accelerated.…”

Section: Is Group Decision Making Necessarily a Social Dilemma?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kameda

Tsukasaki

Hastie

et al. 2011

Psychological Review

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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 confirms 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). And a behavioral experiment demonstrates that cooperators and free-riders coexist in a stable manner in groups performing with the non-linear production function. A collateral result demonstrates 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 Democracy Under Uncertainty 3 decision heuristics.

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Section: Is Group Decision Making Necessarily a Social Dilemma?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kameda

Tsukasaki

Hastie

et al. 2011

Psychological Review

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“…Jury-type situations typically produce more accurate, higher quality solutions than individuals (e.g. Anderson 1961;Taylor and Faust, 1952;Davis and Restle, 1963). One skilled or intelligent member, who is also persuasive, can greatly increase the quality of the group result, especially in tasks where breakthrough reasoning, insight, or flawless analysis are important.…”

Section: Group Problem Solvingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Assessment of Problem Solving at the Combined Arms and Services Staff School

Lussier¹,

Solick²,

Keene³

1992

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“…Slater ( Experiments with group sizes found that problem-solving performance by groups was better than by individuals, but that per-person production decreased as group size increased (Taylor and Faust 1952). The smallness of groups was related to the inhibition of disagreeable comments and the increase of tension between members (Slater 1958).…”

Section: The Size Of Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the dyad is included in the group sizes of a number of studies (e.g., Taylor and Faust, 1952;Kidd, 1958;Gibb, 1951;Bales and Borgatta, 1955;Sl~ter, 1958;Bass and Norton, 1951;Ziller, 1957), some argue that it should not be considered a group. Bouchard (1969, p. 4) warned, "There is good reason to believe that dyads are a unique kind of group and generalities about them to larger groups are tenuous."…”

Section: Dyads: Working Groups Of Twomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of the findings about group size effects upon certain characteristics, such as member participation and interaction, are not surprising. Of further interest is the inhibition of disagreement found in smaller groups, as researched by Slater (1958), and the interaction between group size and the approach to problem solving, as explored by Taylor and Faust (1952). Taylor and Faust (1952) used the "Twenty Questions"…”

Section: The Size Of Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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