Real and Conceived Roles in Family Decision Making

Abstract

T IS almost tautological that family living requires a certain amount of group decision making. That families differ in the way in which they make decisions and that too little is known of this aspect of family life are probably equally obvious. With this in mind, we have embarked on a long-term empiric study of family decision making, investigating such matters as the roles of various family members in the decision making process, relative influence of members, changes in the process over time, and assessment of our ability to teach rational decision making. In our early attempts to teach rational decision making to young married couples, it became apparent that many husbands and wives had little realization of the way in which they or their spouses behave in such interaction. If couples are to be taught to engage in more rational decision making, some means are needed to discover, and thus to enable them to learn, just what their behavior in a decision making session is and where, perhaps, it is deficient. It is the intent of this paper to report on our effort to observe directly the roles that members play in family decision making interaction, giving attention to theoretical and procedural matters as well as to some findings of the study. The central question to which this pilot study was addressed is, what extent are husbands and wives able to recognize their roles in a family decision making session? To this end, it was decided to engage a sample of married pairs in an actual decision making session and to observe and record the actions of each of the mates. Bales' procedure of interaction process