Knowing Others' Preferences Degrades the Quality of Group Decisions

When groups of people get together to make decisions, they often struggleto fulfil their potential. Part of the reason is that they tend to spend more time talking about information that everyone shares rather than learning fresh insights from each other.

?In a research study published in?the?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Andreas Mojzisch and Stefan Schulz-Hardt?have uncovered a new reason groups so often make sub-optimal?decisions.?

Group discussions usually start with the members exchanging their preferences that they’ve reached before the group discussion begins.?

The researchers argue “The idea that learning the group members’ choice preferences reduces the attention devoted to processing the information exchanged can be derived from research showing that the availability of consensus information, that is, information about other persons’ opinions, reduces the attention devoted to processing lower level pieces of information.”?

The researchers show that when a group of people begin a?discussion by sharing their initial preferences, they subsequently devote less?attention to the information brought to the table by each member, thus?leading the group to fail to reach the optimal decision. The practicalimplications are clear — if you can, avoid beginning group decision-making?sessions with the exchange of members’ initial preferences?about a proposal, problem/issue or person.?

Mojzisch and Schulz-Hardt began their investigation with a carefully?controlled simulation of a real group discussion. Rather than exchanging?ideas face-to-face, dozens of participants were presented with some?selective written information about various job candidates and either told or not told about the initial preferences of other group members who’d?received different information. Each participant then received the?information that had been given to all the other group members.

Participants needed to consider the information available to the entire?group if they were to identify the optimum candidate. Crucially,?participants who began the session by hearing about other group members’?initial candidate preferences were subsequently less successful at using the?group’s shared information to pick the optimum candidate. A memory test?suggested this was because they’d paid less attention to the relevant?information than had the participants who’d been kept in the dark about?other members’ initial candidate preferences.

A final study tested these effects in a real, face-to-face group?decision-making?situation. One hundred and eighty students participated in sixty?three-person groups tasked with selecting the best among three job?candidates. Each group member started off with a unique set of information?about the three candidates and the optimum candidate selection could onlybe reached if group members shared with each other their unique?information. Once again, groups were far less successful at sharing the?necessary information, and therefore at reaching an optimal decision, if?they began their session by sharing their initial candidate preferences. As before, the reason was that sharing initial preferences led group members?to pay less attention to the relevant information during group discussion.

“The take-home-message of our study is simple,”?Mojzisch?says, “Ninety per cent of group discussions start with the members exchanging?their pre-discussion preferences. Our research shows that learning the?other group members’ preferences at the beginning of a group discussion?has a negative effect on the quality of group decision-making.”

The researchers added: “We also found evidence for the mechanism underlying the negative effect of learning the others’ preferences on decision quality. In all four experiments, participants paid less attention to the information exchanged when they were made aware of the others’ preferences, which, in turn, negatively affected decision quality.”

A more productive and effective way for group discussion would be to examine the issue or problem or proposal through the sharing of information and??facts and asking questions before each person indicates their preferences. This tempers any predetermined preferences or biases that may exist and encourages open perspectives and curiosity.

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