Development of Strategic Norms in Groups

In his classic norm formation research, Sherif (1935) demonstrated convergence in group members' judgments of ambiguous perceptual stimuli. In the present study, we investigated convergence in group members' strategic orientations for solving problems, specifically riskiness and conservatism. According to Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins, 1998), people in a “promotion focus” (who are sensitive to the presence and absence of positive outcomes and who desire accomplishments) adopt risky strategies for solving problems, whereas people in a “prevention focus” (who are sensitive to the absence and presence of negative outcomes and who desire security) adopt conservative strategies. Using a modified version of Sherif's classic paradigm, we introduced a subtle manipulation to induce promotion vs prevention focus in three-person groups working on a multitrial recognition memory task. We found evidence that group members' responses converged and that this convergence was associated with a directional bias in strategic orientation (i.e., promotion groups were riskier than prevention groups). Implications of these results for understanding shared reality in groups were discussed.