12 - An observational experiment in group decision-making: Can people detect bad group decisions?

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we examined the effect of decision strategy on bad decisions in group decision-making. The decision strategies manipulated in the experiment were additive difference model, lexicographic, and disjunctive, but unlike in the case of individual decision-making, there was little effect of decision strategy. It is possible that the decision strategies defined and manipulated in this study are group decision strategies, which are different from individual decision-making. This may have led to a different process of group interaction. Since the psychological process of group decision-making is different from that of individual decision-making, it is not clear how the psychological process of group decision-making leads to the worst choice. Therefore in this chapter, we examine this issue. The first possibility is that in the cognitive process of group decision-making, some members have lost the ability to recognize that they are choosing the worst option or that they think that the option adopted by the group is the worst, but in the meeting process, they did not take the option they wanted. In this chapter, we discuss the results of this experiment. Here, the participants in the experiment are asked to watch a video of a group decision-making process and consider whether they would consider it undesirable or unsuitable if the members of the group decided on an option that was considered to be clearly the worst in the video.