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Majority Influence Process in Group Judgment: Test of the Social Judgment Scheme Model in a Group Polarization Context

Nara University, ohtsubo{at}daibutsu.nara-u.ac.jp

Ayumi Masuchi

Nara University

Daisuke Nakanishi

Nara University

The purpose of this study is to test Davis’s (1996) Social Judgment Scheme (SJS) model, which was proposed as a predictive model of group decision making with continuous alternatives. The SJS model assumes that individual group members’ influence on the group decision exponentially declines with the distance from other members’ judgments (i.e. majority influence process). Fifty-five 3-person groups engaged in eight group polarization tasks. First, the model fits of the SJS model and the Averaging model were compared in terms of the predictive accuracy. Results indicted that the SJS model yielded accurate predictions more often than the Averaging model. Second, a different analytical approach confirmed the model’s corollary—the skewness of individual judgments distribution was negatively correlated with the direction of group polarization. These findings support the model’s assumption of majority influence process in continuous alternatives tasks.

Key Words: group decision making • group polarization • majority influence process • social judgment scheme model

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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Ohtsubo, Y. Articles by Nakanishi, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?