1. Abstract
a. Evidence suggests groups are more rational than individuals.
2. Introduction
a. For the most part, evidence suggests groups are more rational than individuals
b. For the most part, groups seem to be more strongly motivated by payoff maximization.
c. For the most part, groups tend to be more competitive than individuals
3. Brief review of research on group decision making in non-interactive settings
a. Groups tend to display less hindsight bias (Stahlberg, citation 26)
b. Groups tend to be less overconfident (Sniezek and Henry, citation 28)
c. Groups take better risks (Rockenbach, Sadrieh and Mathauschek, citation 29)
d. Groups make fewer errors than individuals in risky choice (Charness, Karni and Levin, citation 30)
e. Groups showed less myopic loss aversion (Sutter, citation 31)
f. Groups made faster and more utilitarian decisions than individuals in a monetary policy scenario (Blinder and Morgan, citation 33)
g. Using field data on mutual fund performance, Prather and Middleton (citation 35) did not find significant differences in funds performance.
h. There is no answer as to whether or not group choices are more risky or less risky than individuals.
i. Early literature provides evidence that groups tend to polarize individual attitudinal judgments ii. Current research shows mixed results, as well as null results. (Citation 42 – 46)
i. Groups are more prone to decoy effect (preference between two alternatives reverse as a result of manipulation of a third, inferior alternative), Slaughter, Bagger and Li (citation 48)
j. Groups more prone to sunk cost bias (Whyte, citation 50)
k. In intellective tasks (tasks that have a clear ex-post evaluation criterion for quality of performance), groups usually do better (citation 52, 53)
l. Groups do