Group Polarization (Risky Shift) in LED and Leaderless Group Discussions

Two studies examined the link between social dominance and male waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Groups of four men interacted in a leaderless group discussion. In both studies, men with higher WHRs (associated with current and long-term health status) were rated by other group members as behaving more leader-like when an observer was present, and rated themselves as being more assertive. In Study 2, men with higher WHRs were rated by independent observers as behaving more dominantly, but only when the evaluator was present. These results are discussed in terms of evolutionary models of health, attraction, and intrasexual competition.

Twelve four‐person female groups of subjects displaying the typical underestimation of their peers' (relative to their own) risk acceptance were compared with twelve groups of subjects who (slightly) overestimated their peers' risk acceptance. Risk level was measured by responses to a set of hypothetical decision situations known to elicit risky shift on the basis of previous research. Risky shift following group discussion was not found to be different for the two types of groups, casting doubt on the widely suggested role of peer underestimation in risky shift. Nor was risky shift affected by whether or not group members stated their individual decisions publicly at the close of discussion. Larger group risky shifts were accompanied by higher self‐ratings given by group members on a number of polarity scales. In discussing the findings, we outline an explanation of group‐induced shifts in risk taking, emphasizing the motivational and informational inducements provided by group discussion whereby group members come to discard their prior positions in favor of more aspired ones.

This study aims to identify the effect of familiarity among group members and their disagreements over decision-making under conditions of unshared information. As a research methodology we adopted a laboratorial quasi-experiment. The decision-making process has gone through reverse translation, cultural adaptation, and two validations. For the experimental application we developed a specific data collection system. In addition, the group discussions were watched by previously trained observers and recorded for later analysis. 144 college classmates participated in the experiment, divided into groups of three people. Among the results, it was found that familiarity between the participants contributed to a better decision-making process by the individuals under conditions of irregular unshared information. Also, from a quantitative and qualitative analysis of group discussion, we noted that there was a substantial exchange of information and disagreement among members about the choice alternatives, which contributes to obtaining better quality from group decisions. In general, we noted that irregular unshared information does not affect the quality of group decisions when there is an intensive exchange of information between the members.

These studies investigate whether individuals with high narcissism scores would be more likely to emerge as leaders during leaderless group discussions. The authors hypothesized that narcissists would emerge as group leaders. In three studies, participants completed personality questionnaires and engaged in four-person leaderless group discussions. Results from all three studies reveal a link between narcissism and leader emergence. Studies 1 and 2 further reveal that the power dimension of narcissism predicted reported leader emergence while controlling for sex, self-esteem, and the Big Five personality traits. Study 3 demonstrates an association between narcissism and expert ratings of leader emergence in a group of executives. The implications of the propensity of narcissists to emerge as leaders are discussed.

The present research tested relations between extraversion and emergent leadership among men in situations that differed in potential reward availability. Four-person groups of men engaged in a Leaderless Group Discussion (LGD) task and were randomly assigned to be evaluated by an attractive female observer, an attractive male observer, or not be evaluated. Evolutionary theories suggest that impressing a female evaluator in an intrasexually competitive situation should hold greater reward potential for men than impressing either a male evaluator or no evaluator. Accordingly, more extraverted men (who are more sensitive to reward cues) should display more group leadership when being evaluated by a woman than either a man or no one. Self-and peer ratings confirmed that more extraverted men were significantly more likely to emerge as leaders, but only in the female-evaluator condition. The results are discussed in terms of the interplay between personality, situational factors, and evolutionary principles.

Communities of practice are, and must be, fundamentally voluntary membership groups since they are about sharing of knowledge and expertise, something which cannot be effectively forced. Accordingly, no single person has positional leadership in a community of practice, as there is no formal structure in place to create such hierarchy. However, wherever groups of people exist with any kind of shared task, there is leadership present, and leadership issues are repeatedly emerging aspects of the informal dynamics of that group or community of practice. It has often been noted that there actually is no such thing as a leaderless group. Informal leadership behaviours will come to the fore at certain points in any group’s life, whether consciously evoked or not (Tyson, 1998). Given this scenario, leadership exists in a community of practice (CoP) by informal agreement and negotiation. CoPs usually find it necessary to designate a leader for purposes of coordination and clarification, and possibly for direction of communications and to help structure the group interactions. Leaders are therefore created by the ‘followers’, and have only as much authority as the CoP group is willing to invest in the leadership role. Much research has been done into the psycho-dynamics of group relations, and it is often said that we place a little too much emphasis in our investigations and our speech on the phenomenon of leadership, when we also know that leaders, especially of voluntary groups, cannot function without followers who ‘permit’ the leader to act on their behalf. Leadership and ‘followership’ are thus flipsides of the same coin, and one cannot be understood without the other. Perhaps we should therefore focus on the needs of the followers to see what kind of leader will help the CoP serve its purposes (Long, 1992; Hirschhorn, 1991, 1997). In the CoP, leaders will aid the workings of the community and therefore be granted limited authority by the group on the basis of: • charismatic personality, • superior expert knowledge, • outstanding breadth of knowledge (not necessarily a specialist or expert, but holding some knowledge of a wide domain of interest to the CoP), • high professional standing and reputation, • high capacity to organise and mobilise the CoP (i.e., facilitation skills), or • some combination of some or all of these aspects. (Tyson, 1998) As with all voluntary groups, leaders with limited authority rely heavily on their capacity for positively influencing the work of the CoP and the interactions of its members. This influence takes the form of a number of leadership behaviours that are most likely to sustain the followers and keep the issue of leadership as a constructively assigned informal role. It is worth noting that leadership in this sense is a series of functions, and can be shared by more than one person. However, in order to avoid confused communications and expectations, a designated leader is normally more able to productively assign and direct other contributions of a leadership nature, setting in place a negotiated sharing of the role and functions. The leadership functions of highest value to the CoP will be: • balancing of members’ interests and articulation of agenda items for the CoP, including identifying priority rankings on certain issues; • attending to inclusiveness of the CoP, actively working at drawing in contributions from all members; • facilitating interactions of the CoP, chairing, clarifying, encouraging, summarising, challenging at times, and articulating the issues the CoP may be struggling to articulate; • especially encouraging a culture of egalitarianism and respect for ‘junior partners’, so that neither experience nor strong personality dominates the CoP. These leadership behaviours relate to both the task elements of the CoP and the relationship elements (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson, 2000), as they are described in the Situational Leadership literature. Task elements are more to do with getting the work of the CoP underway and done, and often require a degree of control and directiveness. Relationship elements are more to do with drawing the group together and maintaining its working relationships and sense of connectedness (to each other and to the CoP’s tasks). Noticeably, the actions for leaders of CoPs are more to do with the relationship axis, except where some particular crisis might arise which demands urgent action and interaction from the community, in which rare case a more directive leadership style will work best for a short time. Overall, leaders of communities of practice need to be prepared to renegotiate their leadership status frequently (“If you would prefer that I not operate as leader, that’s OK with me, and we should decide to choose someone else now”), always recognising that they have no power other than that which the CoP members voluntarily surrender upwards to them. This kind of power base does not suit individuals who like clear positional authority, but favours those with high tolerance for ambiguity and strong ‘people’ skills. These are most likely to be able to draw a CoP together and hold it so for a sufficient period of time for it to operate as a sharing community.

Many-Facet Rasch model(MFRM) of Item Response Theory(IRT) is applied to performance assessment.Domestic and foreign researches applied MFRM in many fields such as analysis of various examinations,medical diagnosis,judgments of life quality and so on.In these assessment tests,ratings were influenced by a variety of factors among which judges played the most important part.This thesis mainly probed into issues covering subjects,judges,rating scales and rating deviation in Leaderless Group Discussion(LGD) of personnel assessment center in personnel assessment to improve the effectiveness and stability of assessment.This study adopted the FACETS software,a MFRM computer statistics program,to establish 3 facets of subjects,judges and rating dimensions to analyze subjects' abilities,rater severity,inter-rater reliability,dimension difficulty and rating scales.Meanwhile,this study got results of deviation analysis of subjects and judges,judges and dimensions,deviation among judges,subjects and dimensions.The results illustrated significant differences existed among levels of subjects' ability,rater severity,dimension difficulty and the rating scale.Differences of rater severity generally did not affect the test scores of subjects.Except some judges,other judges' ratings had good internal consistency.Dimension difficulty could better distinguish subjects' ability but judges tended to concentrate on using an intermediate rating scale;The results of deviation analysis of judges and subjects,judges and dimension showed that untrained judges E,F had more rating deviations,so it was necessary to monitor their scores and strengthen the training of the two judges.The application of MFRM,IRT's expansion,to assessment center evaluation could enable evaluators to make the employment decision by estimated ability level of subjects,design tests according to dimension difficulty,set the standards for training and selection referring to examine judges' ratings rater severity and inter-rater reliability,improve the assessment process based on a variety of deviation analysis,and finally promote scientific,standardized and precise development of evaluation system of assessment center.

Many of the most important decisions in our society are made within groups, yet we know little about how the physiological responses of group members predict the decisions that groups make. In the current work, we examine whether physiological linkage from “senders” to “receivers”—which occurs when a sender’s physiological response predicts a receiver’s physiological response—is associated with senders’ success at persuading the group to make a decision in their favor. We also examine whether experimentally manipulated status—an important predictor of social behavior—is associated with physiological linkage. In groups of 5, we randomly assigned 1 person to be high status, 1 low status, and 3 middle status. Groups completed a collaborative decision-making task that required them to come to a consensus on a decision to hire 1 of 5 firms. Unbeknownst to the 3 middle-status members, high- and low-status members surreptitiously were told to each argue for different firms. We measured cardiac interbeat intervals of all group members throughout the decision-making process to assess physiological linkage. We found that the more receivers were physiologically linked to senders, the more likely groups were to make a decision in favor of the senders. We did not find that people were physiologically linked to their group members as a function of their fellow group members’ status. This work identifies physiological linkage as a novel correlate of persuasion and highlights the need to understand the relationship between group members’ physiological responses during group decision-making.

The impact of intragroup agreement on social pressure in small discussion groups was investigated. Cohesion was induced in 50% of 54 all-male or all-female American college student discussion groups by establishing agreement among group members' opinions on four controversial social issues. Conflict was introduced with a subsequent topic on which one member disagreed with all others. The remaining groups had no opportunity to establish group cohesion prior to encountering group disagreement. The group task was to achieve a consensus opinion on the disagreement topic. Postdiscussion group attraction ratings confirmed that establishing prior agreements among group members increased group cohesion. Opinion rating data indicated that both male and female groups exhibited the greatest opinion change by deviates when cohesion was low and consensus was required. Results provided evidence that increased cohesion attenuated social pressure on the deviate. The findings supported Hollander's theory of idiosyncrasy credits and deviated from Festinger's social comparison account of social pressure.

Information exchange is a crucial process in groups, but to date, no one has systematically examined how a group member’s relationship with a group can undermine this process. The current research examined whether disidentified group members (i.e., members who have a negative relationship with their group) strategically undermine the group outcome in information exchange. Disidentification has been found to predict negative group-directed behaviour, but at the same time disidentified members run the risk of being punished or excluded from the group when displaying destructive behaviour. In three studies we expected and found that disidentified group members subtly act against the interest of the group by withholding important private information, while at the same time they keep up appearances by sharing important information that is already known by the other group members. These findings stress the importance of taking a group member’s relationship with a group into account when considering the process of information exchange.

Group leadership and shared task representations in decision making groups

<p class="06IsiAbstrak"><strong>The Implementation of Chatting as the Medium in Cyber Group Counseling</strong><strong>. </strong>The purpose of this study is to find out an overview of the implementation of cyber group counseling through chat media, the advantages of cyber group counseling through chat media, and the obstacles or disadvantages of using chat media in the implementation of online group counseling. This research was carried out on the basis of the need to develop guidance and counseling services, especially group counseling services in the digital era. This research uses qualitative descriptive analysis method. The research setting was carried out in the Islamic Education Guidance and Counseling Study Program, Faculty of Tarbiyah IAIN Kudus in the even semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. The subject of this study is a student of the Islamic Education Guidance and Counseling study program, Faculty of Tarbiyah IAIN Kudus semester IV who took the Group Counseling course in the even academic year 2020/2021. The focus of this research is to find out an overview of the implementation of cyber group counseling through chat media. The authors used two data sources in this study, namely primary data and sequence data. Primary data were obtained through observations and interviews with respondents who practiced cyber group counseling. Meanwhile, secondary data were obtained through documentation studies/literature studies from literature books and scientific articles in journals related to the focus of this research. Data analysis is carried out through three stages, namely data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. The result is that the implementation of cyber group counseling through chat media is carried out through four stages, namely the formation stage, the transition stage, the activity stage, and the termination stage. In this case, the group leader and group members exchange conversations with each other by writing down text messages in the group chat room. The advantage of implementing cyber group counseling through chat media is that it can provide speaking opportunities to group members who are less comfortable if they convey their problems or opinions directly, and are considered more practical, efficient, and flexible in their implementation. The disadvantages are the presence of unstable signal network constraints, group dynamics are not well formed, group leaders have difficulty seeing the expressions of group members because group members' expressions are limited to the use of emoticons, and require a lot of time to write down conversations via text messages.</p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Cyber Group Counseling, Chat Media

A Partial Test of Janis' Groupthink Model: Effects of Group Cohesiveness and Leader Behavior on Defective Decision Making

Group Recommendation (GR) is the task of suggesting relevant items/events for a group of users in online systems, whose major challenge is to aggregate the preferences of group members to infer the decision of a group. Prior group recommendation methods applied predefined static strategies for preference aggregation. However, these static strategies are insufficient to model the complicated decision making process of a group, especially for occasional groups which are formed adhoc. Compared to conventional individual recommendation task, GR is rather dynamic and each group member may contribute differently to the final group decision. Recent works argue that group members should have non-uniform weights in forming the decision of a group, and try to utilize a standard attention mechanism to aggregate the preferences of group members, but they do not model the interaction behavior among group members, and the decision making process is largely unexplored.In this work, we study GR in a more general scenario, that is Occasional Group Recommendation (OGR), and focus on solving the preference aggregation problem and the data sparsity issue of group-item interactions. Instead of exploring new heuristic or vanilla attention-based mechanism, we propose a new social self-attention based aggregation strategy by directly modeling the interactions among group members, namely Group Self-Attention (GroupSA). In GroupSA, we treat the group decision making process as multiple voting processes, and develop a stacked social self-attention network to simulate how a group consensus is reached. To overcome the data sparsity issue, we resort to the relatively abundant user-item and user-user interaction data, and enhance the representation of users by two types of aggregation methods. In the training process, we further propose a joint training method to learn the user/item embeddings in the group-item recommendation task and the user-item recommendation task simultaneously. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on two real-world datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed GroupSA method compared to several state-of-the-art methods in terms of HR and NDCG.

In this article, the authors examine the impact of fair treatment by a group leader on people's relationships with and feelings toward other individual group members. Previous studies neglected procedural fairness effects on interpersonal relationships between group members. The authors hypothesized that fairness affects interpersonal relationships and feelings toward another group member only when the leader is regarded as representative and supported by the other group members. In three studies, the authors manipulated procedural fairness (no voice vs. voice) and other group member's support for the leader (full vs. mixed support for the leader). Two vignette studies supported the hypothesis. In addition, an experimental laboratory study showed that this interaction effect between procedural fairness and leader support was most pronounced among those with high belongingness needs.