The Group Effect: Social Influences on Risk Identification, Analysis, and Decision Making

Abstract

Both laypeople and professionals are embedded in social contexts when faced with risk-related questions and make risk judgments and decisions in groups rather than alone. There is a rich body of knowledge from psychological research on how social factors in general and group dynamics specifically influence human judgment formation and decision making. This chapter provides an overview of some of the most important insights from group psychology applied to real-world situations in which people seek appropriate risk identification, analysis, judgments, and decisions. We discuss how groups tend to (1) impede individuals from thinking freely on what risks could occur (risk identification), (2) limit themselves to information commonly known by all group members instead of considering all the relevant information available to the group (risk analysis), and (3) agree on relatively extreme risk judgments after discussing risks in a group setting (risk judgments and decisions). We close the chapter with recommendations on how a group’s risk identification, judgment formation, and decision making can be improved both by individual group members as well as from an organizational perspective.