Stern School of Business New York UniversityDoctoral Seminar inGroup Processes in Decision Making, Problem Solving, and JudgmentSpecial Research Topics in Marketing Professor Kim CorfmanB70.4372.2 8-88 MECSpring 1997 998-0519, 995-4006 (fax) kcorfman@stern.nyu.eduOverviewThis seminar is devoted to research that helps us understand, describe, predict, and improve group performance, choice, and judgment. Many disciplines have contributed to the large body of published research on groups, but little effort has been made to integrate their wide variety of perspectives and findings. We will read from a broad selection of fields including social psychology (small groups and social dilemmas), judgment and decision making, marketing (families, buying centers, and channels), information systems (computer mediation), management and politics (power), social welfare theory, and decision theory. Our first goal will be to familiarize ourselves with these literatures. Our second goal will be to understand and identify ways to take advantage of ways in which they complement each other. While group decision making may on the surface seem a very focused topic, an entire seminar could easily taught in any one of these areas. The required readings only scratch the surface. Greater depth and opportunity for integration will be provided on topics of particular interest to you through the development of research proposals. Structure and RequirementsTwo kinds of readings are indicated for most sessions -- Background and Recent Research. Everyone should read everything carefully and be prepared for a detailed discussion. The Background readings are usually overview chapters or literature reviews. Each week, each student will be assigned one of the Recent Research papers to abstract and present to the class. The abstract should be short (1-2 single-spaced pages). Please make enough copies for everyone. Both the presentation and abstract should summarize what the authors did (objectives, theory, method, results, contribution). The presentation should go further and critique the approach, evaluate the contribution, and suggest where the research could go from there. It should be carefully prepared and timed to last 20-30 minutes (depending on how many articles are to be presented that day). Forty percent of the course grade will be based on your presentations and participation in discussion.The other 60% of your grade will be based on written assignments. The first will be a short research proposal (roughly 5 double-spaced pages) to be handed in and presented to the class in the 7th session. The second is an integrative literature review and brief summary of the basic propositions you plan to investigate in your final paper, due in the 10th session. The literature review need not be on the topic of your first proposal, but should probably be in the area in which you would like to develop your final paper. The third (final) assignment is a complete research proposal, to be handed in and presented in the 14th session. This proposal should be detailed enough that if it is experimental, you could begin data collection the next day. It should include: Introduction (including a clear statement of your goals, what is interesting about the research, and why it is an important contribution) Literature review Theory and/or model (usually including hypotheses) Proposed methodology Proposed method of analysisSession 1 (1/23): Introduction to GroupsBackground: Baron, Robert S., Norbert L. Kerr, and Norman Miller (1992), Group process, Group Decision, Group Action, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, Chapter 1: "Introduction," 1-15. Brown, Rupert (1988), Group Processes: Dynamics within and between Groups, New York: Basil Blackwell, Chapter 1: "The Reality of Groups," 1-18. Deutsch, Morton (1973), The Resolution of Conflict, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Chapter 4: "Group Formation," 48-66. Levine, John M. and Richard L. Moreland (1990), "Progress in Small Group Research," Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 585-634.Session 2 (1/30): Groups vs. IndividualsBackground: Davis, James H. and Mark F. Stasson (1988), "Small Group Performance: Past and Present Research Trends," in Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 5, Edward J. Lawler and Barry Markovsky (eds.), Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 245-277. Hill, G. W. (1982), "Group vs. Individual Performance: Are N+1 Heads Better than One?" Psychological Bulletin, 91, 517-539. Kerr, Norbert L. Robert J. MacCoun, and Geoffrey P. Kramer (1997), "Bias in Judgment: Comparing Individuals to Groups," Psychological Bulletin, in press.Recent Research: Michaelsen, L. K., W. E. Watson, and R. H. Black (1989), "A Realistic Test of Individual Versus Group Consensus Decision Making," Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 834-839, and associated comments. Laughlin, Patrick R., Scott W. VanderStoep, and Andrea B. Hollingshead (1991), "Collective Versus Individual Induction: Recognition of Truth, Rejection of Error, and Collective Information Processing," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 (1), 50-67. Sniezek, Janet A. and Rebecca A. Henry (1990), "Revision, Weighting and Commitment in Consensus Group Judgment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 45 (February), 66-84.Session 3 (2/6): Group Composition and StructureBackground: Moreland, Richard L. and John M. Levine (1992), "The Composition of Small Groups," in Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 9, E. J. Lawler, B. Markovsky, C. Ridgway, and H. A. Walker (eds.), Greenwich, CT: JAI, 237-280. Cartwright, Dorwin (1968), "The Nature of Group Cohesiveness," in Group Dynamics: Research and Theory," Dorwin Cartwright and Alvin Zander (eds.), NY: Harper and Row, 91-109. Brown, Rupert (1988), Group Processes: Dynamics within and between Groups, New York: Basil Blackwell, Chapter 3: "Structural Aspects of Small Groups," 51-89.Recent Research: Ward, James C. and Peter H. Reingen (1990), "Sociocognitive Analysis of Group Decision Making among Consumers," Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (December), 245-262. Corfman, Kim P. and Barbara E. Kahn (1995), "The Influence of Member Homogeneity on Dyad Judgment: Are Two Heads Better than One?," Marketing Letters, 6 (1), 23-32. Zaccaro, Stephen J. and M. Catherine McCoy (1988), "The Effects of Task and Interpersonal Cohesiveness on Performance of a Disjunctive Group Task," Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 10 (10), 837-851. Session 4 (2/13): Power and Influence in OrganizationsBackground: Deutsch, Morton (1973), The Resolution of Conflict, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Section of Chapter 5 on power, pp. 84-93. Bacharach, Samuel B. and Edward J. Lawler (1982), Power and Politics in Organizations, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Chapter 2: "Form of Power," 10-26, and Chapter 3: "Content of Power," 27-44. March, James G. (1966), "The Power of Power," in Varieties of Political Theory, D. Easton (ed.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 39-70. Recent Research: Thomas, Robert J. (1982), "Correlates of Interpersonal Purchase Influence in Organizations," Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (September), 171-182. Brass, Daniel J. and Marlene E. Burkhardt (1993), "Potential Power and Power Use: An Investigation of Structure and Behavior," Academy of Management Journal, 36 (3), 441-470. Venkatesh, R., Ajay K. Kohli, and Gerald Zaltman (1995), "Influence Strategies in Buying Centers," Journal of Marketing, 59 (October), 71-82. Steckel, Joel H. and John O'Shaughnessy (1989), "Towards a New Way to Measure Power: Applying Conjoint Analysis to Group Decisions," Marketing Letters, 1 (1), 37-46.Session 5 (2/20): Power and Influence in the FamilyBackground: Davis, Harry L. (1976), "Decision Making within the Household," Journal of Consumer Research, 2 (March), 241-260. Wilkie, William L., Elizabeth S. Moore-Shay, and Amardeep Assar (1992), "Family Decision-Making for Household Durable Goods," Marketing Science Institute Working Paper, 92-108 (April). Corfman, Kim P. (1987), "Group Decision Making and Relative Influence When Preferences Differ: A Conceptual Framework," in Research in Consumer Behavior, Vol. 2, Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Jagdish N. Sheth, eds., Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 223257.Recent Research: Corfman, Kim P. (1991), "Perceptions of Relative Influence: Formation and measurement," Journal of Marketing Research, 28 (May), 125-136. Spiro, Rosann L. (1983), "Persuasion in Family Decision-Making," Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (March), 393-402. Beatty, Sharon E. and Salil Talpade (1994), "Adolescent Influence in Family Decision making: A Replication and Extension," Journal of Consumer Research, 21 (September), 332-341. Qualls, William J. (1987), "Household Decision Behavior: The Impact of Husbands' and Wives' Sex Role Orientation," Journal of Consumer Research, 14 (September), 264-279.Session 6 (2/27): Choice Shifts, Polarization, and GroupthinkBackground: Myers, David G. (1982), "Polarizing Effects of Social Interaction," in Group Decision Making, Hermann Brandstatter, James H. Davis, and Gisela Stocker-Kreichgauer (eds.), New York: Academic Press, 125-161. Isenberg, Daniel J. (1986), "Group Polarization: A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50 (6), 1141-1151. Janis, Irving L. (1983), Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 1: "Introduction: Why So Many Miscalculations," pp. 2-13; Chapter 8: "The Groupthink Syndrome," pp. 174-197.Research Papers: Zuber, Johannes A., Helmut W. Crott, and Jaochim Werner (1992), "Choice Shift and Group Polarization: An Analysis of the Status of Arguments and Social Decision Schemes," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62 (January), 50-61. Irwin, Julie R., and James H. Davis (1995), "Choice/Matching Preference Reversals in Groups: Consensus Processes and Justification-Based Reasoning," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 64 (December), 325-339. Tetlock, P. E., R. S. Peterson, C. McGuire, S. Chang, and P. Feld (1992), "Assessing Political Group Dynamics: A Test of the Groupthink Model," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 403-425.Session 7 (3/6): Presentations (Short Proposal due today.)Session 8 (3/13): Normative Models of Group Decision MakingBackground: Corfman, Kim P. and Sunil Gupta (1993), "Mathematical Models of Group Choice and Negotiations," in Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science: Marketing, Vol. 5, Jehoshua Eliashberg and Gary L. Lilien (eds.), Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland, 83-142. Read pp. 83-107. Keeney, Ralph L. and Howard Raiffa (1993), Decisions with Multiple Objectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 10: "Aggregation of Individual Preferences," 515-547. Kleindorfer, Paul R., Howard C. Kunreuther, and Paul J. H. Schoemaker (1993), Decision Sciences: An Integrative Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 7: "Formal Models of Group Decision Making," 241-288. Skip 276-288.Recent Research: Fiorina, Morris P. and Charles R. Plott (1978), "Committee Decisions under majority Rule: An Experimental Study," American Political Science Review, 72, 575-598. Eliashberg, Jehoshua, Stephen A. LaTour, Arvind Rangaswamy, and Louis W. Stern (1986), "Assessing the Predictive Accuracy of Two Utility-Based Theories in a Marketing Channel Context," Journal of Marketing Research, 23 (May), 101-110. Neslin, Scott A. and Leonard Greenhalgh (1983), "Nash's Theory of Cooperative Games as a Predictor of the Outcomes of Buyer-Seller Negotiations: An Experiment in Media Purchasing," Journal of Marketing Research, 20 (November), 368-379. Gupta, Sunil (1989), "Modeling Integrative, Multiple Issue Bargaining," Management Science, 35 (July), 788-806.Session 9: Descriptive Models of Group Decision MakingBackground: Corfman, Kim P. and Sunil Gupta (1993), "Mathematical Models of Group Choice and Negotiations," in Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science: Marketing, Vol. 5, Jehoshua Eliashberg and Gary L. Lilien (eds.), Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland, 83-142. Read pp. 107-142. Stasser, Garold, Norbert L. Kerr, and James H. Davis (1989), "Influence Processes and Consensus Models in Decision-Making Groups," in Psychology of Group Influence, Paul B. Paulus (ed.), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 279-326.Recent Research: Corfman, Kim P. and Donald R. Lehmann (1987), "Models of Cooperative Group Decision-Making and Relative Influence: An Experimental Investigation of Family Purchase Decisions," Journal of Consumer Research, 14 (June), 1-13. Rao, Vithala R. and Joel H. Steckel (1991), "A Polarization Model for Describing Group Preferences," Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (June), 108-118. Wilson, Elizabeth J., Gary L. Lilien, and David T. Wilson (1991), "Developing and Testing a Contingency Paradigm of Group Choice in Organizational Buying," Journal of Marketing Research, 28 (November), 254-266. Stasson, Mark F., Kaoru Ono, Suzi K. Zimmerman, and James H. Davis, "Group Consensus Processes on Cognitive Bias Tasks: A Social Decision Scheme Approach," Japanese Psychological Research, 30 (2), 68-77.Session 10: Judgmental Bias: Sins of OmissionBackground: Allison, Scott T., Diane M. Mackie, and David M. Messick (1996), "Outcome Biases in Social Perception: Implications for Dispositional Inference, Attitude Change, Stereotyping, and Social Behavior," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 28, Mark P. Zanna, ed., NY: Academic Press, 53-93. Miller, Dale T. and Deborah A. Prentice (1994), "Collective Errors and Errors About the Collective," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20 (October), 541-550.Recent Research: Argote, Linda, Mark A. Seabright, and Linda Dyer (1986), "Individual versus Group Use of Base-Rate and Individuating Information," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 38, 65-75. Wittenbaum, Gwen M. and Garold Stasser (1995), "The Role of Prior Expectancy and Group Discussion in the Attribution of Attitudes," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 82-105. Worth, Leila T., Scott T. Allison, and David M. Messick (1987), "Impact of a Group Decision on Perception of One's Own and Others' Attitudes," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 53 (4), 673-682. Wright, Edward F., C. A. Elizabeth Luus, and Scott D. Christie (1990), "Does Group Discussion Facilitate the Use of Consensus Information in making Causal Attributions?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59 (2), 261-269.Session 11: Information Sharing and Integration (Literature Review due today.)Recent Research: Gigone, Daniel and Reid Hastie (1993), "The Common Knowledge Effect: Information Sharing and Group Judgment," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65 (5), 959-974. Stasser, Garold and William Titus (1985), "Pooling of Unshared Information in Group Decision Making," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48 (6), 1467-1478. Vinokur, Amiram, Eugene Burnstein, Lee Sechrest, and Paul M. Wortman (1985), "Group Decision Making by Experts: Field Study of Panels Evaluating Medical Technologies," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 70-84. Gruenfeld, Deborah H. Dissertation paper in JPSP Larson, James R., Jr., Pennie G. Foster-Fishman, and Christopher B. Keys (1994), "The Discussion of Shared and Unshared Information in Decision-Making Groups," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67 (3), 446-461.Session 12: Decision Structure and ContextBackground: Miller, Charles E. (1989), "The Social Psychological Effects of Group Decision Rules," in Psychology of Group Influence, Paul B. Paulus (ed.), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 327-355. Pavitt, Charles (1993), "What (Little) We Know about Formal Group Discussion Procedures: A Review of Relevant Research," Small Group Research, 24 (May), 217-235. Kiesler, Sara and Lee Sproull (1992), "Group Decision Making and Communication Technology," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes," 52, 96-123.Recent Research: Diehl, M. and W. Stroebe (1991), "Production Loss in Idea-Generating Groups: Tracking Down the Blocking Effect," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 392-403. Valacich, Joseph S., Alan R. Dennis, and Terry Connolly (1994), "Idea Generation in Computer-Based Groups: A New Ending to an Old Story," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 57, 448-467. Davis, James H., Mark Stasson, Kaoru Ono, and Suzi Zimmerman (1988), "Effects of Straw Polls on Group Decision Making: Sequential Voting Pattern, Timing, and Local Majorities," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55 (6), 918-926. Innami, Ichiro (1994), "The Quality of Group Decisions, Group Verbal Behavior, and Intervention," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 60, 409-430.Session 13: Social Dilemmas and Social MotivesBackground: Messick, David M., and Marilynn B. Brewer (1983), "Solving Social Dilemmas: A Review," in Review of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 4, Ladd Wheeler and Phillip Shaver (eds.), Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 11-44 Baron, Jonathan (1994), Thinking and Deciding, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 23: "Social Dilemmas: Cooperation vs. Defection," 474-501. Lurie, Stephen (1987), "A Parametric Model of Utility for Two-Person Distributions," Psychological Review, 94 (1), 42-60. Recent Research: Kerr, Norbert L. and Cynthia m. Kaufman-Gilliland (1994), "Communication, Commitment, and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66 (3), 513-529. Rutte, Christel G., Henk A. M. Wilke, and David M. Messick ((1987), "The Effects of Framing Social Dilemmas as Give-Some or Take-Some Games," British Journal of Social Psychology, 26 (June), 103-108. Liebrand, Wim B. G., and Godfried J. van Run (1985), "The Effects of Social Motives on Behavior in Social Dilemmas in Two Cultures," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 86-102. Corfman, Kim P. and Donald R. Lehmann (1993), "The Importance of Others' Welfare in Evaluating Bargaining Outcomes," Journal of Consumer Research, 20 (June), 124-137.Session 14 (5/1): Presentations (Final Proposal due.)