Informative intervention to improve normative functioning and output of groups

Abstract

Formal probability models of group decision making imply that the normative influence of large opinion factions tends to have a negative impact on the quality of decisions in difficult tasks and a positive impact in easy tasks that many people solve correctly. Consequently, an informative intervention (INFO) was developed that advises group members to evaluate task difficulty and to react correspondingly to normative majority or plurality influence. In the study, groups of 5 persons had to solve 2 types of intellective tasks: knowledge questions and logic problems. Compared to control groups, group members in the INFO condition were less overconfident, and achieved more correct group decisions.