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INTRODUCTION
Much research has established that group discussion changes individual
attitudes in systematic ways. Thus Stoner (1968) had six persons at a time
respond as individuals to a series of story problems called "choice-dilemma" items (Kogan & Wallach, 1964). The subject's task was to advise
the fictitious character of each item about how much risk he/she should
take in facing a given decision dilemma. For example, consider the following item:
George, a competent chess player, is participating in a national chess tournament.
In an early match, he draws the top-favored player in the tournament as his opponent. George has been given a relatively low ranking in view of his performance
in previous tournaments. During the course of his play with the top-favored man,
George notes the possibility of a deceptive though risky maneuver which might
bring him a quick victory. At the same time, if the attempted maneuver should
fail, George would be in an exposed position and defeat would almost certainly
follow.
Imagine that you are advising George. Check the lowest probability of success
that you consider acceptable for George to attempt the risky maneuver.
George should attempt the play if the chances are at least:
_ _
1 in 10 that the play would succeed
_ _
2 in 10 that the play would succeed
3 in 10 that the play would succeed
4 in l0 that the play would succeed
_ _
5 in 10 that the play would succeed
_
Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Robert E Bordley, Societal Analysis Department, General Motors Research Labs, Warren, MI 48090.
262
0030-5073/83 $3.00
Copyright 1983by AcademicPress, Inc.
All rights of reoroductionin any formreserved.
_ _
_ _
6 in 10 that the
7 in 10 that the
8 in 10 that the
9 in 10 that the
George should
succeed.
263
After marking their individual responses to all the items, the participants
then assembled as a group and discussed each item until they agreed on
a group response to each item. In general the group response was more
risky than that of the individuals.
This particular effect was called the "risky shift" and was followed by
many more studies and experiments. However, in different contexts, one
could demonstrate a "shift to greater caution." It has been found that
items which elicit initially relatively risky responses led to even more
risky responses after group discussion. Conversely, items which initially
elicit relatively cautious responses led to even more cautious responses
after group discussion (see Teger & Pruitt, 1967).
What this suggests is that group discussion tends to make subjects
whose initial attitudes might have been risky or cautious even more risky
or cautious. Thus their attitudes become more extreme or polarized. Myers
and Lamm (1976) called this finding the "Group Polarization Hypothesis: . . . . The average postdiscussion response will tend to be more extreme in the same direction as the average of the prediscussion responses."
This paper will develop a model of attitude change from group discussion. The first section of the paper sets up George's situation as a Bayesian decision problem. This means that a subject will determine the lowest
chances he accepts for George's problem by considering the underlying
utilities and subjective probabilities.
Bayesian decision theory I predicts that the subjective probabilities asi Much recent experimental evidence argues against the empirical validity of Bayesian
decision theory. Thus in " W h o Accepts Savage's Axiom?" (to name one of many such
articles), Slovic and Tversky argue that indivduals in experimental settings do not appear
to obey Savage's "sure-thing" principle. In response to these comments, some economists
argue that Bayesian decision theory should not be judged on the basis of the validity of its
axioms but on the basis of how useful its implications are. Thus, if Bayesian theory leads
to successful models of individual economic behavior, we might conclude that Bayesian
theory--though not an accurate description of human behavior--is nevertheless a useful
theoretical tool.
This answer is not fully satisfying. Some recent work has developed more sophisticated
models of human behavior based on Bayesian theory. (Thus see Domencich & McFadden
(1975).) In my opinion, answers to the present objections to Bayesian theory will arise from
such more complex developments of Bayesian theory. In the meantime, this'paper develops
certain empirical implications of Bayesian theory; these empirical implications will be qualitatively consistent with certain well-known psychological phenomena. Hence in a sense,
this paper demonstrates the usefulness of Bayesian theory as a theoretical tool in the context
of group behavior.
264
R O B E R T F. B O R D L E Y
sessed after group discussion should differ from the subjective probabilities assessed prior to group discussion. If these subjective probabilities
differ in the ways specified by Supposition 1 of Section 1, then Section
1 shows that we can predict the risky shift in George's problem. In fact
we can predict the risky and cautious shifts implied by the Group Polarization Hypothesis, in general.
Thus Supposition 1 specifying how subjective probabilities after group
discussion differ from subjective probabilities prior to group discussion
implies the empirical risky and cautious shifts in the Group Polarization
Hypothesis. The second section derives a formula relating the postdiscussion subjective probabilities to the prediscussion subjective probabilities. This is derived from Bayesian rationality conditions.
The third section shows that this formula implies Supposition 1. Thus
this paper shows that the risky shifts and cautious shifts can be deduced
from the principles of Bayesian decision theory and that the Group Polarization Phenomenon can be viewed as the result of individual Bayesian
rationality in group discussion. The fourth section discusses the application of this formula to a problem somewhat more complicated than
George's. This shows that the formulas I derive enable us to estimate not
only the direction of the shifts but also the magnitude.
1. GEORGE'S PROBLEM
265
(1.1)
p/,(v(m))
(uk(v) -
(1.2)
Since the utility of winning exceeds the utility of losing, this becomes
p k ( v ( m ) ) ~ pk(V(O)).
(1.3)
(1.4)
266
ROBERT F. BORDLEY
267
sonable. 3 Thus suppose our situation involves very few " h a r d f a c t s " or
an unmanageably large n u m b e r of " h a r d facts" (so that it is difficult to
decide which facts to pay attention to). In these cases, individuals must
rely heavily upon intuition in making their judgments, an intuition which
is not easily " e x p l a i n e d " in the actual group discussion. In a sense then,
the only information which individuals can communicate is how confident
they feel about event E occurring or not occurring. And that is just information about their subjective probabilities.
George's problem seems to be such a situation. Thus it seems reasonable to use this assumption in George's case. We formalize the assumption as
The probability-pooling assumption. The information which the group
discussion gives individual k can be summarized by the n-1 subjective
probabilities P l (E) . . . . , P k - 1 (E), Pk + 1 (E), . . . , Pn (E).
With the probability-pooling assumption, we can think of individual k
as consulting a group of (n - 1) individuals about the probability of event
E. In group discussion, the (n - 1) individuals give individual k the
assessments Pl (E) . . . . , P~ - 1 (E), Pk + 1 (E), . . . , Pn (E). Given these
assessments, individual k revises his own probability p~ (E). Thus the
problem becomes a problem of pooling probability assessments. (See
Winkler (1968, 1981), Morris (1974, 1977), Bordley (1982).)
Without loss o f generality, we c o m b i n e individual k's a s s e s s m e n t ,
Pk (E), with the (n - 1) other assessments to form the vector of n assessments: (171 (E) . . . . , Pn (E)). Individual k's problem is to aggregate
these estimates to form his own final estimate, p~ (E).
The argument is presented in Bordley (1982). We review the key steps
here:
(A) First we make the continuity assumptions needed to write p~ (E)
as some f u n c t i o n F of (191 (E) . . . . .
p~ (E)). Thus we get p~ (E) =
F(pl, , P~)(B) We then make certain assumptions of noninteraction--these are
similar to separability assumptions used in additive value theory. We find
p~(E)
F (j=~1 gj(pj(E)))
268
ROBERT F. BORDLEY
j= l \Po(E) ]
p*k(E) =
(2.1)
j= \ p o ( E ) ]
1
~ /
( 1 - po(e))
Lk(G ) = j~lWjLj.=
where
Jr
)
1 - j=l~WJ
L0
(2.2)
(p~(E) )
Lk(G) = log
1 -p-~E)
'
Lj
= log 1 ; ~e)/'
L0
=log 1-700(a/"
Thus this formula says that the logarithm of the odds assessed by individual k after the group discussion is the weighted sum of the log-odds
assessed by each individual prior to the group discussion plus some constant.
If information is defined according to information theory as
I(E) = - log (p(E))
then the log-odds, L(E) = /(not E) - I(E). We could refer to the logodds as the net information favoring the occurrence of event E.
With that interpretation, Eq. (2.2) says that the net information favoring
event E which individual k carries out of the discussion with him is a
weighted sum of the net information which each individual carried into
the discussion with him plus some correction constant.
Now consider the weights. The weight ws.reflects the importance which
individual k attaches to j's opinion. It is a function of
(1) How accurate individualj's opinions have been in the past: Has he
been confident and then been wrong?
269
(2) How biased individual j ' s opinions tend to be: Does individual j
tend to overstate what he knows? Does he tend to overqualify his judgments?
(3) How much the information which individual j ' s opinion reflects is
similar to the information other individuals have.
What is the sum of the weights? Suppose we assume that every individual in the group has some positive weight, wj > 0. Thus in particular
n
Ewj> 0.
j=l
j#k
~wi= w~+
j=l
wj>l.
j=l
j#k
,-
j=l
Lo) =
vj (Lj -
Lo
(3.1)
270
ROBERT F. BORDLEY
uk (v(m))
u~ ff(m))
Uk (V(O))
uk 0C(O))
271
The minimum probability of success which the doctor would accept for
surgery before conducting it is initially
b Pk (V(O)) + a.
Thus the higher the cost of surgery, a, and the smaller the difference
success or failure makes to the doctor when he conducts surgery versus
when he does not (i.e., the larger b is), the higher that minimum probability is.
After consulting his colleagues, Pk (v(o)) changes to p~ (v(o)). Thus
the minimum probability of success changes by
b (p~(v(o)) - pk(v(o))).
We can view this as a measure of the. magnitude of the shift. If the
probability of the patient living is small, we know it will tend to be a
risky shift, i.e., the doctor will tend to risk the operation. If the probability of the patient living is large, the doctor will tend to avoid the operation.
If we can estimate the weights which the doctor would assign to his
colleagues in formula (2.1) and know the assessments his colleagues have
for the .patient surviving (pj (v(o)), j = 1 . . . . .
k - 1, k + 1 . . . . .
n),
then we can predict what p~ (v(o)) will be. If we know how the doctor
feels about what is at stake in the operation, we can estimate b. This
allows us to estimate the magnitude of the shift.
272
ROBERT F. BORDLEY
SUMMARY
This paper presented a model of how individual decisions change as a
result of group d~scussion. The change occurred because the individual
updated his subjective probabilities. The resulting formula was based upon
assumptions of individual rationality. The formula was
t/
W'
;=q \po(E) /
po(E)
p~(~ =
\po(E) /
po(E) + J=~ (]
p-~/
(1 - po(E))
273
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