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Group Decision Making

Real-world decisions are often made in a social context. Physicians and financial advisors make decisions in consultation with their clients. Spouses collaborate to make an array of household  decisions. In general work settings, decisions are almost always being made by a team, committee, or group. 

Decisions made by groups can be influenced by diverse perspectives, information, and expertise. Past work has demonstrated that such diversity can improve the quality of the resulting decisions (e.g., the wisdom of crowds). However, research has also demonstrated that interaction (e.g., discussion among the group members) can hurt the quality of group decisions (e.g., group polarization). When and why groups produce these contrasting outcomes is the subject of ongoing research. 

This special issue addresses group decision-making, including questions such as: What factors influence the quality of group decisions? How are the capabilities of groups and their constituent members related? How do group members' individual differences influence the quality, speed, confidence, and other characteristics of group decisions? How and when is knowledge and information distributed among group members combined when groups make decisions? Can the performance of a given group be predicted ahead of time? 

Edited By:

  • Christian C. Luhmann
  • Lael J. Schooler

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.

  1. The tendency to devaluate delayed rewards, a phenomenon referred to as ‘discounting behaviour’, has been studied by wide-ranging research examining individuals choosing between sooner but smaller or later but ...

    Authors: Diana Schwenke, Peggy Wehner and Stefan Scherbaum
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2022 7:71
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  2. Collective intelligence (CI) is said to manifest in a group’s domain general mental ability. It can be measured across a battery of group IQ tests and statistically reduced to a latent factor called the “c-factor...

    Authors: Luke I. Rowe, John Hattie and Robert Hester
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2021 6:26
    Content type: Review article Published on:

  3. It has repeatedly been reported that, when making decisions under uncertainty, groups outperform individuals. Real groups are often replaced by simulated groups: Instead of performing an actual group discussio...

    Authors: Sascha Meyen, Dorothee M. B. Sigg, Ulrike von Luxburg and Volker H. Franz
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2021 6:18
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  5. In a Dutch auction, an item is offered for sale at a set maximum price. The price is then gradually lowered over a fixed interval of time until a bid is made, securing the item for the bidder at the current pr...

    Authors: Murray Bennett, Rachel Mullard, Marc T. P. Adam, Mark Steyvers, Scott Brown and Ami Eidels
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:62
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  6. The “surprisingly popular” method (SP) of aggregating individual judgments has shown promise in overcoming a weakness of other crowdsourcing methods—situations in which the majority is incorrect. This method r...

    Authors: Abraham M. Rutchick, Bryan J. Ross, Dustin P. Calvillo and Catherine C. Mesick
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:57
    Content type: Brief report Published on:

  7. The wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making are important tools for integrating information between individuals, which can exceed the capacity of individual judgments. They are based on different forms...

    Authors: Daisuke Hamada, Masataka Nakayama and Jun Saiki
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:48
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  8. It has widely been accepted that aggregating group-level decisions is superior to individual decisions. As compared to individuals, groups tend to show a decision advantage in their response accuracy. However,...

    Authors: Cheng-Ju Hsieh, Mario Fifić and Cheng-Ta Yang
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:45
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  9. When a fingerprint is located at a crime scene, a human examiner is counted upon to manually compare this print to those stored in a database. Several experiments have now shown that these professional analyst...

    Authors: Jason M. Tangen, Kirsty M. Kent and Rachel A. Searston
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:23
    Content type: Brief report Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2023 8:61

  10. In peer instruction, instructors pose a challenging question to students, students answer the question individually, students work with a partner in the class to discuss their answers, and finally students ans...

    Authors: Jonathan G. Tullis and Robert L. Goldstone
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:15
    Content type: Original article Published on: