Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

In this study, laboratory experiments to compare the decision-making procedure of MAU (multi-attribute utility) with unstructured discussion on the effect of decision quality in the 33% information-shared condition were conducted, and the factors that affected decision quality were also preliminarily explored. Two kinds of materials for experiments were used in this study. One was the profiles of three hypothetical candidates for student body president (less difficult decision level) and the other was the profiles of six hypothetical faculty candidates (high difficult decision level). Subjects met in three-person groups (small size) or six-person groups (large size) to decide which of the candidates was best suited for the position of student body president or would be the best person to teach an English course. Each profile for candidate contained five positive items, three neutral items and one negative item. The actual items member in a group received were not identical. 33% of the total items was shared (each member received the same items) and the remaining items were unshared (only one member received). There were 288 undergraduates of non-psychological speciality participating in these experiments who were divided according to three experimental conditions, i.e., size of the groups (3-person or 6-person), decision-making procedures (MAU or unstructured discussion) and the levels of task difficulty (3-candidates or 6-candidates). So there were 8 groups of subjects under each condition. Assignment to experimental conditions and to decision-making groups within each condition was random.

The results showed: (1) MAU procedure used by groups was more helpful to reduce some negative effects of group dynamic processes. The number of attributes (especially, unshared information) used in the MAU was more than that of unstructured condition. (2) Compared to groups under conditions of unstructured discussion, MAU groups did not show their superiority on attitudinal and interaction criteria (such as self-confidence, satisfaction with the final group decision). Under some conditions, even lower levels of those criteria were shown in MAU groups than those under conditions of unstructured discussion. (3) Much longer time of making a decision could be seen in MAU groups than that in groups under conditions of unstructured discussion. (4) Under the MAU condition, group size had no effect on the pooling of shared and unshared information, while the effect of the complexity of the task was mediated by the group size. MAU procedure was suitable to the tasks with comparatively lower level of complexity as the size of group increased (in this study it is 6-person groups). At the end of this paper, some suggestions were put forward. It might be a better strategy for a group to pool information by using MAU procedure first and then to discuss and reach consensus by using unstructured discussion, for example.

_{[Chinese Version | Index | Acta Psychologica Sinica | Other Journals | Subscription form | Enquiry ]}

Mail any comments and suggestions to hkier-journal@cuhk.edu.hk .