Ritter Marie, Pritz Johannes, Morscheck Lara, Baumann Emma, Boos Margarete
Social and Communication Psychology, Georg-Elias-Müller-Institute for Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 25;14:1038262. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1038262. eCollection 2023.
Group decision making under uncertainty often requires groups to balance exploration of their environment with exploitation of the seemingly best option. In order to succeed at this collective induction, groups need to merge the knowledge of all group members and combine goal-oriented and social motivations (i.e., group cohesion). This paper presents three studies that investigate whether more cohesive groups perform worse at collective induction tasks as they spend less time exploring possible options. Study 1 simulates group decision making with the ε-greedy algorithm in order to identify suitable manipulations of group cohesion and investigate how differing exploration lengths can affect outcomes of group decisions. Study 2 ( = 108, 18 groups á 6 participants) used an experimental manipulation of group cohesion in a simple card choice task to investigate how group cohesion might affect group decision making when only limited social information is available. Study 3 ( = 96, 16 groups á 6 participants) experimentally manipulated group cohesion and used the HoneyComb paradigm, a movement-based group experiment platform, to investigate which group processes would emerge during decision making and how these processes would affect the relationships between group cohesion, exploration length, and group decision making. Study 1 found that multiplicative cohesion rewards have detrimental effects on group decision making, while additive group rewards could ameliorate negative effects of the cohesion reward, especially when reported separately from task rewards. Additionally, exploration length was found to profoundly affect decision quality. Studies 2 and 3 showed that groups could identify the best reward option successfully, regardless of group cohesion manipulation. This effect is interpreted as a ceiling effect as the decision task was likely too easy to solve. Study 3 identified that spatial group cohesion on the playing field correlated with self-reported entitativity and leader-/followership emerged spontaneously in most groups and correlated with self-reported perceptions of leader-/followership in the game. We discuss advantages of simulation studies, possible adaptations to the ε-greedy algorithm, and methodological aspects of measuring behavioral group cohesion and leadership to inform empirical studies investigating group decision making under uncertainty.
在不确定性情况下进行群体决策通常要求群体在探索其环境与利用看似最佳的选项之间取得平衡。为了在这种集体归纳中取得成功，群体需要整合所有成员的知识，并结合目标导向和社会动机（即群体凝聚力）。本文提出了三项研究，探讨凝聚力更强的群体在集体归纳任务中是否会因为花在探索可能选项上的时间更少而表现更差。研究1使用ε-贪婪算法模拟群体决策，以确定对群体凝聚力的合适操纵方式，并研究不同的探索时长如何影响群体决策的结果。研究2（N = 108，18个小组，每组6名参与者）在一个简单的卡片选择任务中对群体凝聚力进行了实验操纵，以研究在只有有限社会信息可用时群体凝聚力如何影响群体决策。研究3（N = 96，16个小组，每组6名参与者）对群体凝聚力进行了实验操纵，并使用了基于移动的群体实验平台HoneyComb范式，以研究在决策过程中会出现哪些群体过程，以及这些过程将如何影响群体凝聚力、探索时长和群体决策之间的关系。研究1发现，乘法形式的凝聚力奖励对群体决策有不利影响，而加法形式的群体奖励可以减轻凝聚力奖励的负面影响，尤其是当与任务奖励分开报告时。此外，发现探索时长对决策质量有深远影响。研究2和研究3表明，无论群体凝聚力操纵情况如何，群体都能成功识别出最佳奖励选项。这种效应被解释为天花板效应，因为决策任务可能太容易解决了。研究3确定，游戏场上的空间群体凝聚力与自我报告的实体性相关，并且在大多数群体中自发出现了领导者/追随者现象，且与游戏中自我报告的领导者/追随者认知相关。我们讨论了模拟研究的优势、对ε-贪婪算法的可能调整，以及测量行为群体凝聚力和领导力的方法学方面，以为研究不确定性情况下群体决策的实证研究提供参考。
