Group decision process and incrementalism in organizational decision making

In two studies examining resource allocation, support is found for the notion that group decisions are affected in systematic ways depending on whether or not there was individual consideration of the problem before meeting as a group. Specifically, compared to no prior consideration groups, prior consideration groups (1) escalate their commitment more in progress (i.e., ongoing) decisions, and (2) are less willing to concentrate resources on a single project in adoption (i.e., resource utilization) decisions. The findings challenge the blanket assertion that promoting divergent views in a group decision context is always related to better decisions.     

Decision making, movement planning and statistical decision theory

We discuss behavioral studies directed at understanding how probability information is represented in motor and economic tasks. By formulating the behavioral tasks in the language of statistical decision theory, we can compare performance in equivalent tasks in different domains. Subjects in traditional economic decision-making tasks often misrepresent the probability of rare events and typically fail to maximize expected gain. By contrast, subjects in mathematically equivalent movement tasks often choose movement strategies that come close to maximizing expected gain. We discuss the implications of these different outcomes, noting the evident differences between the source of uncertainty and how information about uncertainty is acquired in motor and economic tasks.     

Decision making styles and progress in occupational decision making

This study provides a reexamination of the role of different decisional strategies in facilitating progress in occupational decision making. Although the assumptions that a rational decision making style is the preferred mode of vocational functioning has been endorsed in a variety of career theories and interventions, there has been conflicting evidence about the validity of this assumption. To examine the role of different decisional approaches in the progress of making an occupational decision, the rational, intuitive, and dependent decision making style scores of 71 undergraduate students were used to predict progress in occupational decision making. The results of the regression analyses failed to provide support for the assumption that a rational style is the most effective in accomplishing this careerrelated task, but indicated strong support for the conclusion that the use of dependent decisional strategies is damaging, particularly in early stages of the decisional process.     

Benefits of team participative decision making and its potential to affect individual creativity

How does team participative decision‐making affect individual creative performance? Building on team climate theory (Anderson & West, 1998; West 1990, 2002; West & Sacramento, 2012), this study investigates the indirect effect of team participative decision making on employee creativity through individual perception of cognition team diversity and psychological safety. Results from 256 supervisor–subordinate dyads in 45 teams show that team participative decision making is positively associated with cognitive team diversity and psychological safety. For the mediating effects, team participative decision‐making climate is positively indirectly related to creative performance via psychological safety but not via cognitive team diversity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Decision ecology: Foraging and the ecology of animal decision making

In this article, I review the approach taken by behavioral ecologists to the study of animal foraging behavior and explore connections with general analyses of decision making. I use the example of patch exploitation decisions in this article in order to develop several key points about the properties of naturally occurring foraging decisions. First, I argue that experimental preparations based on binary, mutually exclusive choice are not good models of foraging decisions. Instead, foraging choices have a sequential foreground-background structure, in which one option is in the background of all other options. Second, behavioral ecologists view foraging as a hierarchy of decisions that range from habitat selection to food choice. Finally, data suggest that foraging animals are sensitive to several important trade-offs. These trade-offs include the effects of competitors and group mates, as well as the problem of predator avoidance.     

The effects of organizational frames and problem ambiguity on decision making

This paper investigates how organizational climate and information quantity influences choice of decision making strategies. A simulated company with an organizational climate was manipulated to be either supportive or non-supportive of participative decision making methods. Subjects then solved problems in which information available to make a decision was manipulated. Results indicated that climate has an effect on choice of decision making strategies independent of information quantity. A second study was then conducted to assess how the climate manipulation affected subjects' decision-making. Organizational climate information appears to affect decisions in a manner analogous to Tversky and Kahneman's (1981) decision framing model.The contribution of each author is equal for this paper. The order of authorship was determined by a coin flip. This research was supported by Ohio Board of Regents and University of Akron Faculty Research grants to the second author. Portions of this paper were presented at the 1989 Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology Meetings and the 1991 Association of Management Meetings.     

The effects of physical contact and decision type on moral decision making: A study of harm to save moral behavior

This study examined the relationship between physical contact and decision type in predicting “harm to save” behavior. Participants were assigned to making either a judgment or a choice involving moral dilemmas. All participants were presented with dilemmas that either required or did not require having physical contact with potential victims. Participants were asked to decide whether to sacrifice fewer people to save more (utilitarian responses) or not to do so and thus more people would die (deontological responses). The study sample included 345 participants who completed a set of self‐report measures. Results indicated an interaction between physical contact and decision type. In the choice condition only, participants reported significantly less utilitarian responses to the dilemmas that required having physical contact with the person to be harmed than to dilemmas that did not require physical contact. This difference was not found in the judgment condition. These results contribute to a greater understanding of the nature and potential malleability of human morality.     

Sequential decision making: An aggregate scheduling methodology

Recent studies of sequential decision making performance have utilized optimal dynamic programming solutions as the criteria for evaluating the quality of human decisions. The difficulties incumbent in increasing the dimensionality of dynamic programming formulations effectively prohibit their extension beyond the case of a single decision variable. In the following article an alternative optimization formulation for a two-decision-variable case is presented, followed by the development of a corresponding one-decision-variable problem. In addition, related methodological problems limiting the comparability of results among previous studies are presented. It is suggested that the proposed problem formulation and its accompanying interpretation for the decision maker largely eliminate these previous methodological problems. Furthermore, the problem formulation permits quantification of the relative weights that should optimally be placed on future decision periods in the multiple-stage decision problem.     

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful: Anti-attractiveness bias in organizational evaluation and decision making

Within organizational judgment and decision making contexts, biases based on an evaluated person's attractiveness are among the most salient and frequently investigated. An enormous amount of research indicates favoritism for attractive people compared to unattractive ones. The current research demonstrates that the nature of this bias depends on whether one is evaluating a member of the same sex or the opposite sex. Experiment 1 (n = 2639) investigated selection of scholarship applicants and demonstrated that a pro-attractiveness bias held only for selection of opposite-sex scholarship applicants; no such bias was observed for highly attractive same-sex applicants. Experiment 2 (n = 622) investigated evaluations of prospective job candidates and demonstrated again that pro-attractiveness bias was observed only for opposite-sex candidates; participants discriminated against highly attractive same-sex candidates. Moreover, this bias was not observed among highly attractive participants; it held only for moderately attractive participants, those for whom highly attractive same-sex individuals can pose especially potent social threats. Findings suggest that attractiveness biases in organizational decision making are rooted partly in the social threats and opportunities afforded by attractive people.     

Expert testimony and jury decision making: An empirical analysis

This experiment examines the influence of expert psychological testimony on juror decision making in eyewitness identification cases. Experienced jurors and undergraduate mock jurors viewed versions of a videotaped trial, rated the credibility of the eyewitness and the strength of the prosecution's and defense's cases, and rendered verdicts. In the absence of expert testimony jurors were insensitive to eyewitness evidence. Expert testimony improved juror sensitivity to eyewitness evidence without making them more skeptical about the accuracy of the eyewitness identification. Few differences emerged between the experienced jurors and undergraduate mock jurors.     

An experimental simulation study of advanced decision support system for ship navigation

A bridge with an integrated navigation system is compared to a less advanced conventionally equipped bridge in a full mission ship simulator to assess the extent to which fairway navigation benefits from information aids. Realistic scenarios were constructed including several demanding situations when navigating in a fairway. Twenty-two teams each consisting of two members with varying experience as Master Mariners and navigating officers participated in a repeated-measures design. Workload, performance and affective responses were measured. No statistical differences between the bridges were found on any of the dependent measures. The results imply that other factors than the available technology account for the observed differences across teams. A tendency was observed that experienced navigation officers performed better on the conventional bridge than the technically advanced bridge, whilst the opposite was true for less experienced navigation officers.     

Group versus individual decision making: An investigation of performance measures,decision strategies,and process losses/gains

The relative effectiveness of individual and group performance was investigated by employing three decision making strategies. Ignoring this consideration, group decisions were superior (p ⩽ .01) to individual averages, equal to the selected best individual decisions, and inferior to the actual best individual solutions (p ⩽ .05). The results indicated that the degree of process loss/gain and the relative performance of groups and individuals was significantly influenced by the dependent variable utilized and the decision making strategy employed.     

Emotion,cognition, and decision making

We examine two explanations of the subliminal affective priming effect. The feelings-as-information model (Schwarz &; Clore, 1988) holds that judgements are based on perceptible feelings. Hence, affective influences depend on the source to which feelings are (mis)attributed. In contrast, the affective primary hypothesis (Zajonc, 1980) suggests that affective influences should resist attributional interventions. This is because the affective system responsible for preferences is separate from the cognitive system responsible for inferences; because early affective processes are automatic and therefore inaccessible to higher-order interventions; and because early affective responses are not represented as conscious feelings. We tested these explanations in two experiments that crossed subliminal affective priming with (mis)attribution manipulations. Both studies found reliable shifts in judgements of neutral stimuli as a result of primes even when subjects were aware that their feelings might not be diagnostic for the judgement at hand. Subjects did not report experiencing any feelings in response to the primes. The obtained affective priming effect was independent of response times and subjective reports of engaging in judgemental corrections. However, the priming effect did prove sensitive to the experimental instructions. We discuss the implications of these findings for the affective primacy hypothesis and the feelings-as-information model.     

Styles of decision making and their use: An empirical study

As interest has increased in teaching decision-making skills, so the need has grown for an empirically-derived classification system of decision-making behaviours. Six styles of decision making were accordingly isolated and validated by content analysis. Using cluster analysis, the styles were found to group into types along a passive-active continuum of involvement in the decision. Use of style was found to vary across situations, and to be related to the decision's perceived importance and the decision-maker's control in the situation.     

Decision making and professional experience: an experimental study of generating, evaluating and modifying diagnostic hypotheses

Experimental investigations on generation, evaluation, and modification of diagnostic hypotheses in symptom pattern classification revealed in different domains (e.g. clinical decision making) that reasoning in non-experts and experts differ in the 'content' (e.g. issue-directed substance of concepts) rather than in the 'form' of reasoning (e.g. number, specificity of hypotheses). These results are essentially accounted for by the experts' upper-level flexibility in the interpretation of data. In a two-factorial design (competence x predictive value of data), patients' clinical data with varying predictive value were given singularly in succession to two groups (experts and novices; n = 20) of subjects. The task of the subjects was (a) to name their assumptions and (b) give a summarizing decision on the--probable--diagnostic category of hypothetical cases. Results: Between experts and novices no difference was found in the number and degree of specification of hypotheses; in summarizing decisions, experts considered more categories as plausible than novices; on patient data with low predictive value, experts considered more specific categories. The moment of hypothesis formation depends not on the competence level but on the predictive value of the patient's clinical data.     

Adolescent sexuality: values, morality and decision making

The first section of this paper presents a theoretical basis of morality and value formation which provides the background for an examination of adolescent sexual and cognitive development. Data from a study of influences on the sexual decisions of five hundred 13- to 19-year-olds are analyzed in the remainder of the article. Relationships between individual characteristics and the importance of various influences are interpreted in light of the structure of values and moral development.     

Executive functions in decision making: An individual differences approach

This individual differences study examined the relationships between three executive functions (updating, shifting, and inhibition), measured as latent variables, and performance on two cognitively demanding subtests of the Adult Decision Making Competence battery: Applying Decision Rules and Consistency in Risk Perception. Structural equation modelling showed that executive functions contribute differentially to performance in these two tasks, with Applying Decision Rules being mainly related to inhibition and Consistency in Risk Perception mainly associated to shifting. The results suggest that the successful application of decision rules requires the capacity to selectively focus attention and inhibit irrelevant (or no more relevant) stimuli. They also suggest that consistency in risk perception depends on the ability to shift between judgement contexts.