Revision, Weighting, and commitment in consensus group judgment

https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(90)90005-TGet rights and content

Abstract

This study investigates group members' estimates of unknown quantities and their confidence in those estimates in the context of a Revision and Weighting Model of consensus group judgment. In this model, revision refers to the individual process of changing an initial individual judgment as a result of social interaction. In contrast, weighting is the group process of combining revised individual judgments into a single group judgment. Results replicate the findings of J. A. Sniezek and R. A. Henry (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1989) by showing group judgments to be (a) more accurate than individual judgments and (b) often outside the range of the group members' individual judgments. Both of these phenomena occurred during the act of setting the group consensus price estimate, i.e., the weighting process. In contrast, the revision process resulted in little change in members' judgments, but showed some evidence of increasing their confidence in those judgments. There was some indication that it was advantageous for group members to form individual judgments prior to the formation of a group judgment. In general, group members demonstrated high commitment to their group estimates.

References (16)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (93)

  • Unpacking strategic foresight: A practice approach

    2014, Scandinavian Journal of Management
  • Wisdom of group forecasts: Does role-playing play a role?

    2012, Omega
    Citation Excerpt :

    This paper focuses on the judgemental forecasts given by consensus-seeking groups, which are routinely encountered in organisational contexts [17]. In light of previous work suggesting the importance of role-playing [18,19] and the potential advantages of group processes in enhancing individual judgements [20–23], current study aims to compare the effects of role-playing on performance of group predictions and the associated forecast adjustment behaviour. Accordingly, the literature review and the research questions are presented in Section 2, while the details of the experimental study are given in Section 3.

  • Why groups perform better than individuals at quantitative judgment tasks: Group-to-individual transfer as an alternative to differential weighting

    2012, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
    Citation Excerpt :

    However, we would like to emphasize that this effect may be highly task specific and that more complex judgmental tasks might require groups to interact more often to fully manifest G–I-transfer. One question is why we were able to find evidence for increased individual accuracy whereas the only previous study investigating the possible occurrence of revised individual judgments did not (Sniezek & Henry, 1990). Although somewhat speculative, we consider this difference to be due to the type of information participants were allowed to exchange.

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text