risky shifts, cautious shifts, and group polarization

I

Risky shifts, cautious shifts, and group polarization*

COLIN FRASER,

CELIA GOUGE

AND MICHAEL BlLLlG

University of Bristol

On dCcrit deux ttudes portant sur les con- sCquences d’une discussion en groupe de probltmes impliquant un risque. La pre- mitre Ctude montra que d’un cas B l’autre, le risultat peut relever soit d’une conduite impliquant des risques, soit d’une conduite prudente, soit d’une conduite inchangke.

Dans la deuxitme Ctude, oh l’utilisation d‘une Cchelle des prises de risque permettait de savoir si telle dtcision Ctait risquke, prudente ou neutre, on mit la polarisation de groupe en Cvidence, c’est-i-dire le fait qu’une discussion ramene le groupe vers un p61e dCji favorisC. On proposa alors d’ex- pliquer les prises de risque de groupe par des processus de polarisation - n’incluant pas uniquement la prise de risque elle- mCme - et allant de pair avec des phCno- m h e s relatifs B la valeur du risque pris, ce qui prouverait qu’il existe une preference gCnCrale pour ce qui relkve des valeurs positives.

In zwei Untersuchungen werden die Ergeb- nisse einer Gruppendiskussion uber Pro- bleme, die ein Risiko einschliessen, beschrie- ben. Erstere legt da, dass von Fall zu Fall ein Hinwenden zurn Risiko oder zur Vor- sicht, bzw. ein unverandertes Verhalten das Ergebnis sein konnen.

In der zweiten Untersuchung, in welcher eine Tabelle uber riskantes Verhalten be- nutzt wurde, die deutlich zeigte, in wieweit Entscheidungen als riskant, vorsichtig oder neutral zu gelten haben, wurde eine Grup- penpolarisation veranschaulicht, d.h. die Dis- kussion veranlasste Gruppen, sich dem schon begiinstigten Pol zuzuwenden. Es wurde vorgeschlagen, das Risiko-Verhalten von Gruppen in Form von Polarisationsprozes- sen zu erklaren - welches nicht nur auf das Verhalten einern Risiko gegenuber be- schrankt ist - zusarnmen mit etwas das dern Wert des Risikos verwandt ist, was beweisen konnte, dass es sich urn eine allgemeine Vorliebe fur Positiva handelt.

* This research was supported by Research merous helpful comments and suggestions. Grant HR542/1 from the Social Science The interest shown by J. R. Eiser, S . Mos- Research Council. The authors are indebted covici and H. Tajfel is also appreciated. to W. Doise and N. B. Johnson for nu-

Eur. J . SOC. Psychol. I ( I ) . p p . 7-30

8 Colin Fraser, Celia Gouge and Michael Billig

Using a questionnaire called The Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire, studies by Stoner (1961), Marquis (1962) and Wallach, Kogan and Bern (1962) have led to the development of a field of research, by now containing several dozen directly relevant publications, which has often been described as the study of ‘the risky shift’. Reviews of this field can be found in Kogan and Wallach (1967) and Kelley and Thibaut (1969).

Basically the research has revolved around three types of shifts to risk, together with several attempted explanations of these phenomena. First, if, on problems involving risk, the means of initial individual decisions made by groups of subjects are compared with the consensuses arrived at by the same groups of subjects after discussion, then, in general, the consensuses are riskier than the initial means. Secondly, if after consensus subjects are asked to make final individual decisions, the means of these post-consensus decisions are, in general, riskier than the initial means. Thirdly, if subjects make initial individual decisions and then, following group discussion without consensus being required, they make a second set of individual decisions, the means of second decisions are, in general, riskier than the means of initial decisions. Each of these variants is regarded as an example of the shift to risk that is produced by group discussion.

If we move from the reported phenomena to attempts to explain these phenomena we can, by now, compile a reasonably lengthy list of attempts. A representative, though not exhaustive, set includes explanations involving diffusion of responsibil- itv (Wallach, Kogan and Bern, 1964), risk-takers as leaders (Rim, 1964), information highlighting cultural values (Brown, 1965), familiarization (Bateson, 1966), and the rhetoric of risk (Kelley and Thibaut, 1969). Almost all of the proposals have been attempts to explain the risky shift and the risky shift alone. One partial exception was Brown’s (1965) argument that additional information highlights underlying cultural values. Although his explanation concentrated on risk, it also considered possible values for caution which, if invoked, could produce shifts away from risk. Subsequent commentators who have made use of Brown’s proposals (e.g. Kelley and Thibaut, 1969) have tended, however, to reinterpret it as a straight account of a shift to risk.

In addition to being confined to explaining a shift to risk, explanations in this field appear to be highly content-bound, as Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969) have pointed out. It is usually implied that the types of shifts observed are restricted to the topic of risk-taking and that shifts must be explained in terms of risk-related concepts rather than in terms of content-free concepts of wider generality. Thus looked at both in terms of what is held to happen and in terms of the explanations proposed for these happenings, the field of research may seem to deserve unequi- vocably the label ‘the shift to risk’.

Risky shifts, cautious shifts and group polarization 9

It should be stressed, however, that the three types of shift described above energe most clearly when comparisons of pairs of decisions (initial and consensus: initial and post-consensus: initial and second) are summed over numerous groups and over items. Thus it is possible that the shift to risk is, in fact, an abstraction which tends to conceal the fact that what have to be explained are a large number of individual risky shifts together with smaller numbers of cautious shifts and even instances of no shifts at all.

This possibility might be examined at two levels, at the level of item analyses (summing over different groups) and at the level of single pairs of decisions, one group at a time on one item at a time. Data at the latter level, which we shall call ‘the decision level’, does not appear to be available, but item by item information has been reported in a number of studies. Thus initially the search for shifts other than risky ones has to be done in terms of items, although eventually the ability to predict and explain at the decision level is likely to prove desirable.

Furthermore, it seems more crucial to concentrate on the possibility of cautious shifts rather than on no-shifts (which at the item level are not hard to find). For if there are numerous instances of a given phenomenon together with a limited number of examples of the absence of the phenomenon the latter might be explained away in terms of experimental ‘noise’ or the lack of fineness in measurement. But if clear instances of the exact opposite phenomenon, in this case cautious shifts, can be documented, the existence of these should force people to reconsider the description of the phenomena to be explained and the attempts at explanation. If confronted with a number of consistent cautious shifts, most of the theoretical notions mentioned above would appear to require major modification or supple- mentation, if they are not to be discarded. And a willingness to accept that theories of risky shifts alone might not be adequate could, in turn, lead to a reopening of the question of the adequacy of content-bound as opposed to content-free theories.

Are there, then, no cautious or conservative shifts? In fact, from the earliest studies onwards, it has been reasonably clear that there are Choice Dilemmas items which produce cautious shifts, although they have been relatively few in number. Of the twelve original items, two (numbers 5 and 12 in the original) have in published studies produced consistently more cautious than risky shifts, and most of the other items have in at least one study produced overall conservative shifts, although often not at a level of statistical significance.

Nordhgy (1962) devised a series of items which he hoped would elicit cautious shifts; on two of the items the cautious shifts he obtained were statistically significant. Rabow et al (1966) created two ‘norm conflict’ items in which they felt ‘the nxms supporting the conservative alternative were as important, or more important, than the norms supporting the risky alternative’ (p. 20). These two items


produced significant cautious shifts in two different studies (Rabow et al, 1966; Chandler and Rabow, 1969).

In the most ambitious published attempt to produce cautious items, Stoner (1968) attempted to relate widely held values to direction of shift. Values were measured by asking subjects to rank in order of importance to themselves short phrases, each phrase hopefully representing a value. If, for a given item, the phrase describing the risky alternative was more highly ranked than the phrase relating to the cautious option, the item was regarded as risk-oriented; if the cautious phrase was ranked higher than the risky one, the item was caution-oriented. Stoner had six risk-oriented and six caution-oriented items. The latter consisted of the two significant cautious items from Nordhgy (1962) together with four new items. Stoner failed to obtain significant cautious shifts on either of the Nordhgy items, but two of the four new items did produce highly significant shifts to caution, and Stoner reported that these two items plus another of his new items had also produced such shifts for investigators elsewhere.

Thus although risky shifts have been far more numerous, cautious shifts do exist, and deserve closer study.

Experiment 1

The first study to be described was undertaken partly to demonstrate the existence of cautious shifts, by taking advantage of a relatively simple method of selecting appropriate items. The study also involved variations in the nature of the central person described in each situation, together with variations in the size of groups. As far as possible, these manipulations will be ignored. The full study will be reported elsewhere (Fraser and Billig, in preparation); to attempt the full report here would distract from what is central in the present context, namely the differences between potentially risky and potentially cautious items.

Stoner (1968), Teger & Pruitt (1967) and Pruitt & Teger (1967) all found a high negative correlation between mean initial score per item and mean risky shift per item, i.e. the riskier the initial scores on an item the greater the magnitude of subsequent risky shifts. These correlations were based mainly on items covering the risky and neutral regions of a dimension that presumably extends through caution. Stoner’s data, for example. encourages one to expect that the same type of relationship should hold for caution. In other words, cautious shifts will be found on items that produce relatively cautious initial individual decisions. And, from the literature, a rule of thumb might be that cautious shifts will be found on items with mean starting scores of 7 (chances of success out of 10) or higher. There


appear to have been relatively few such items used. This may account, in part, for the scarcity of shifts to caution, together with the possibility that investigators interested in observing risk-taking, may have tended to devise items on which a willingness to take risks seemed intuitively likely to them.

Being able to identify a cautious-shift item, however, is not the same as being able to produce one on command. How can such items be created? Theoretically, it may seem difficult. In the context of group risk-taking, the job of identifying norms or values in a meaningful yet precise way has hardly been started. But pragmatically, it may be simpler. Substitute ‘arguments and information’ for ‘norms and values’ and intuition for precise specification, and what one can do, as a first step, is create items where the item-writer tries to make sure that there is more said on behalf of caution than risk and the arguments on the whole favour no change - in short, slant the balance of the item firmly in favour of caution. As a second step, the items can be tried out on a group of pilot subjects, who need only be asked to indicate their initial opinions. If an item emerges which has a mead initial score of 7 or more but is not so near the end of the scale that ‘ceiling effects’ will appear, then perhaps consistent cautious shifts can be expected.

Method

Pilot Work on Items. A pilot questionnaire of a dozen items was compiled. It consisted of a number of items known to produce risky shifts, a few items that had previously produced cautious shifts, together with several new or markedly modified items which intuitively seemed likely to elicit relatively cautious initial scores. The questionnaire was then given to four groups of undergraduate psychology students from the University of Bristol. The pilot subjects numbered about one hundred in all and included first, second and third year students of both sexes.

Subjects, taking part in laboratory and lecture class groups of approximately twenty-five persons, were given standard instructions and materials for initial individual decisions on a Choice Dilemmas questionnaire (for details see below). Ss were asked to complete the questionnaire in ‘about 15 minutes’ and, in fact, everyone completed the questionnaire within twenty minutes, the average time being about fifteen minutes.

The Final Questionnaire. From the information gained by this pilot-testing it appeared that, with minor changes of wording in one or two items it would be possible to have two subsets each of four items. One subset would be of relatively risky items, i.e. with initial scores of 5 or less; the other subset would consist of relatively cautious items, i.e. initial scores of 7 or more. At the same time it was

12 Colin Fvaser, Celia Gouge and Michael Billig

hoped all initial scores would be far enough from the extremes of the scales to allow room for shifts towards the extremities to occur.

The eight items, in the order in which they were used, can be summarised as follows: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5 .

6.

7.

8.

Graduate in industry has a choice between remaining in his present but un- inspiring job and taking an exciting, better paid job, but with new firm which could fail (Risky). Young man has choice between discontinuing marriage plans or marrying, with grounds for uncertainty about married happiness (Cautious). Chess player has choice between likely but honourable loss and deceptive play which could bring victory or complete defeat (Risky). Rock-climber has choice between giving up hobby or continuing it despite known risk and pregnant wife (Cautious). Husband has choice between recommending abortion for wife’s complicated pregnancy and recommending its continuation despite risk to wife’s life (Cau- tious). Young man has choice between going to medical school and continuing train- ing as concert pianist, with all attendant uncertainties (Risky). A man, having just experienced stomach pains at the airport, has choice between seeing a doctor, which would mean abandoning his holiday plans, and taking off on a charter flight, with the risk of his condition worsening (Cau- tious). Final-year undergraduate has choice between doing Ph.D. research at College of Advanced Technology and doing it at University with good reputation but high faiIure rate (Risky).

The front page of the questionnaire explained the task, including the fact that Ss, for each situation, had to indicate the minimum odds of success they would demand before recommending that the more attractive or desirable alternative be chosen. Each answer had to be chosen from six possible answers. As minimum odds of success, S might require 1 , 3, 5 , 7 or 9 chances in 10, or S could choose ‘No’, i.e. the more attractive alternative should not be attempted, no matter what the prob- abilities. This last alternative was scored as 11.

There were three different versions of the questionnaire. One version referred to ‘The central person in each situation’ and in successive situations the central person was referrsd to as Mr. A., Mr. M., Mr. G. etc. This format is the standard

1 . Items 1 , 2, 3 and 6 are original Wallach from Wallach and Kogan. Items 5 and 7 and Kogan (1959) Choice Dilemmas items, are similar in theme to items in Stoner with minor changes considered necessary (1968), but markedly altered in detail. Item to anglicize the items. Item 8 is modified 4 is a new item.


one used with Choice Dilemmas materials. In a second version, S was asked to imagine a close friend of his as the central person and in the situations the central person was referred to as ‘your friend’. In a third version, S was asked to imagine himself as the central person and each situation was written in terms of ‘you’.

Subjects. Ss were 144 first year male undergraduates at the University of Bristol. They were all British-born, the great majority being eighteen or nineteen years of age, with no one older than twenty-three. They covered the full spectrum of faculties and subjects, except that psychology students were not used. All were unpaid volunteers who were written to and given an appointment. Five Ss were asked to appear at any one time.

Design and Procedure. 36 groups took part, twelve groups for each version of the questionnaire. The twelve groups in each ‘Central Person’ condition were further divided into four three-person, four four-person and four five-person groups.

All groups were run by one male experimenter in the same sparsely furnished room. Ss seated themselves at a large square table in the centre of the room and E sat at a small desk in a corner. Ss were given copies of the questionnaire, together with separate answer sheets, and were then instructed to give their individual decisions on each situation. The instructions used were very similar to those of Wallach et a1 (1962) and numerous other studies. Ss were asked to complete the questionnaire in ‘about ten minutes’.

When all Ss had finished, E collected the answer sheets and distributed fresh ones. E then prepared Ss for a Discussion-without-Consensus condition. (Such a condition had seemed most suitable since some Ss were to discuss different friends or different ‘you’s’ and consensus in these circumstances might have been difficult and possibly meaningless). Ss were told that the first set of decisions had been to familiarize them with the materials and now they were to discuss each of the situations as a group, although they did not have to come to an agreement. After a few minutes discussion they would be asked to indicate their own current positions. They were told that there was no need for these answers to agree with the ones given previously.

Ss discussed the first item for three minutes and then E asked them to indicate their current positions. Ss then discussed the second item for three minutes, after which they indicated their positions on it, and so on.

When all eight items had been completed, E checked that Ss had been using the scoring scale correctly, he briefly explained the purpose of the research, and asked Ss not to discuss the study with others.


Results

Data will be presented and analyzed in terms of the two repeated-measure variables, Pre-Discussion scores vs. Post-Discussion scores and Initially Risky items vs. Initially Cautious items, ignoring the Central Person and Size manipulations. This is both convenient and, for present purposes, justifiable since the conclusions to be drawn regarding types of items and patterns of changes in item scores do not change appreciably from condition to condition. All analyses use groups, not individuals, as units in order to avoid the problem of the non-independence, due to discussion, of individual scores within groups. It should be noted that all significance levels will be stated in terms of two-tailed tests, although at several points one-tailed testing could be justified.

Table 1. Overall aidysis of variances

Source df MS F

Pre/Post (A) 1 Error 35 Risky/Cautious (B) 1 Error 35 A x B 1 Error 35

0.89 1.62 0.55

1.27

0.56

440.58 346.91 (p<.OOl)

10.55 18.84 (p<.OOl)

Table 2. Summary of item scores

Mean Mean Mean

scores scores scores Item pre-discussion post-discussion shift Shift ‘t’

5.12 7.92 3.23 8.04 8.48 5.59 6.81 4.80

4.22 8.33 2.47 8.06 8.96 5.64 7.44 4.30

+0.90* -0.41 $0.76 -0.02 -0.48 -0.05 -0.63 +0.50

5.05 (p<.OOl)

5.85 (p<.OOl)

2.65 (p<.02)

2.66 (p<.02) 2.31 (p<.05)

2.51 (p<.02)

<1.00

< 1 .oo

* The misleading, but possibly revealing, positive and shifts to caution as negative convention of labelling shifts to risk as will be observed.


Table 1 presents a summary of an overall Analysis of Variance involving the repeated measures, Pre- vs. Post-Discussion scores and Initially Risky vs. Initially Cautious items. The expectation, derived from pilot work that there would be two distinct subsets of items is confirmed by the Mean Initial Score column of Table 2. There it can be seen that items 1, 3, 6 and 8 all produced Pre-Discussion scores that were noticeably riskier than the Pre-Discussion scores of items 2, 4, 5, and 7. The least extreme cautious item had a mean initial score that was 1.22 higher than the mean initial score of the least extreme risky item.

From Table 1 it can be seen that the overall difference between the risky and cautious items was very highly significant (p < .OOl), the risky items consistently having lower (riskier) scores than the cautious ones. The interaction between the two main effects was also significant (p < .OOl). This significant interaction reflect- ed the fact that, after discussion, initially risky items became even riskier whereas initially cautious items become even more cautious. In terms of overall means, the mean score on risky items changed (from Pre-Discussion to Post-Discussion) from 4.68 to 4.16, and the mean score on cautious items went from 7.81 to 8.20.

The nature of the significant interaction accounted for the lack of significance of the Pre-Post main effect. The risky and cautious shifts, which went in opposite directions, roughly cancelled each other out and thus there was not a clear overall [difference between scores before and after discussion. The significant interaction term, in conjunction with the non-significant Pre/Post main effect, can be taken as a striking demonstration of the existence of two different types of shift.

What happened, item by item, is shown in Table 2. There it can be seen that significant risky shifts occurred on three of the four initially risky items and significant cautious shifts took place on three of the four initially cautious items. The mean shift on the risky items was slightly greater than on the cautious ones; .52 as opposed to .38 averaged over the subsets of four items; .72 as against .51 on the items that produced significant shifts.

The Spearman rank-order correlation between mean initial score per item and mean shift to risk per item was - 0.69 (p < . I0 on two-tailed test). This confirms that the riskier an item was initially the greater the shift to risk was likely to be, and the more cautious an item was initially the greater the shift to caution was likely to prove.

Discussion

The findings of this study illustrated quite clearly that group discussion of materials dealing with risk could produce, in addition to the familiar risky shifts, cautious shifts, as well as, at an item level, no shifts at all. Overall the findings gave support

16 Colin Fraser, Celin Gouge and Michael Billig

to the pragmatic method of predicting shifts from a knowledge of initial decisions. It appeared that if decisions were initially relatively risky discussion increased risk, and if initial decisions were relatively cautious greater caution followed discussion. One possibility that appealed to the present authors was that ‘relatively risky’ and ‘relatively cautious’ might be reinterpreted simply as ‘risky’ or ‘cautious’. It seemed possible that the apparent continuum of the standard response scale concealed a risky region and a cautious region, with a neutral region of indecision intervening, and that most groups, as represented by their initial means, had opted for risk or for caution and discussion simply moved them further in the direction they had already decided on.

In thinking of how to analyse further the possibilities suggested in the previous paragraph, a major stumbling block seemed to be the standard odds of success scale. In general, it might be suggested that the task of giving advice to someone in terms of ‘minimum odds of success’ is in certain respects a strange one and it might be revealing to explore how Ss understand the task. More specifically, if one is thinking of ‘relative risk’ and ‘relative caution’ (or of a risky region and a cautious region) it is difficult to say where in general the former would stop and the latter begin. Furthermore, it is possible that relative risk and caution might vary from item to item. On an issue of life or death, to insist on 6 or 7 chances of success out of 10 might still seem risky; with a trivial problem, asking for 4 or 5 chances out of 10 might appear unduly cautious. Finally, what is considered risky, cautious or neutral on a given item might vary to some extent from person to person, and thus from group to group. As a result, it is difficult with the odds of success scale to examine in detail notions of moves towards extremities at the level of decisions of individual groups on individual items.

The conclusions drawn from the first study werc that theories which attempted to explain only risky shifts were not adequate accounts of group risk-taking phenomena, and that a clearer picture of what has to be explained might emerge if modifications were made in the methods of measuring risk and caution.

Experiment 2

The view of group risk-taking which the authors tentatively arrived at in the light of the first study’s findings received strong support and clarification from subsequent reports of research conducted by a group of social psychologists in Paris (Moscovici and Zavalloni, 1969; Doise, 1969a). Using Likert-type rating scales they had studied attitudes towards Americans and towards General de Gaulle, judgements regarding General de Gaulle, and attitudes towards a school of ar-


chitecture. In all cases they found that group discussion resulted in shifts towards the extremes of the scale, and these shifts they described as polarization effects. Moscovici and his colleagues explicitly related their work to research on group risk-taking by suggesting that the reported shift to risk was one example of a more general polarization effect which could occur in groups. Thus, perhaps for the first time, a content-free account of group risk-taking phenomena was being proposed.

Regarding the concept of polarization, two distinctions should be made. The first is between polarization and moves to extremities. The present authors confine ‘polarization’ to describing shifts towards the near, or already preferred, pole. An alternative might be to use the term to describe any shift towards extremity; in practice, most shifts might be towards the near pole, but some might be moves in the opposite direction. For this more extensive concept we prefer the phrase ‘moves to extremities’. A second distinction is that between group shifts and individual shifts. Conclusions about group shifts, where the group is represented by means or consensuses, need not apply to individual shifts, where all calculations involve changes in the scores of one individual at a time. For example, a three person group using a seven-point scale (from 1 to 7 with a neutral point at 4) could have initial scores of 7, 5 and 2 and after discussion without consensus all might put down 5. At the group level, a slight move to extremity (which in this case is also polarization) has occurred in the shift from a mean of 4.67 to one of 5.00. But individually, after discussion the new positions are in two cases less extreme and not one of the subjects has adopted a more polarized position.

In the light of these distinctions, the second experiment to be reported examines in more detail risky shifts and cautious shifts in terms of group polarization. As has been described, the authors had had risk-taking results which strongly implied polarization. The Paris group had polarization results with very clear implications for group risk-taking studies. An obvious study to be done next was one which applied an unambiguous Likert-type scale, as used by Moscovici and Doise, to the risk-taking materials of Experiment 1. To this end, we devised a scale which forced Ss, on each item, to indicate how strongly they favoured risk or how strongly they favoured caution, or whether they did not favour either. Risk and caution in each situation were represented by the risky alternative and the cautious alternative.

In exploring polarization effects, the primary aim of the study was to test the prediction that when the mean of the initial individual decisions of the members of a group clearly favoured one of the alternatives in a situation group discussion would cause the group as a whole to polarize further in that same direction. No clear expectations were held regarding items and decisions which initially produced


neutral scores. A subsidiary aim was to check whether polarization effects would be demonstrated by female groups since all Ss in Experiment 1 had been male and the situations being used had all been designed around male central persons.

Method

Polarization Questionnaire. The questionnaire used in this study contained exactly the same situations, in the same order, as used in the previous one. The general instructions were the same. In fact, the only changes introduced in the questionnaire were modifications relating to the way in which Ss gave their responses.

On the instruction page the following was substituted for the normal account of the odds-of-success scale:

For each situation on the following pages, you will be asked to indicate what you would recommend to the central person with regard to alternatives X and Y. For each situation, your answers must be chosen from the following seven possible answers: 1. Strongly recommend alternative X 2. Recommend alternative X 3. Tend to recommend alternative X 4. Neutral i.e. alternatives X and Y appear equally balanced 5 . Tend to recommend alternative Y 6. Recommend alternative Y 7. Strongly recommend alternative Y

In addition, the supplementary instructions presented at the end of each situation were modified such that S was now asked to put a tick opposite the answer that best represented his advice to the central person. The seven alternatives were then indicated, with the two alternatives, X and Y, appropriately specified. For example for Situation 1, the riskiest choice read: ‘1 - Strongly recommend Mr. A to take new job’; the most cautious choice was, ‘7 - Strongly recommend Mr. A to remain in present job’.

Subjects. There were six male five-person groups and six female five-person groups, making sixty subjects in all. Ss were first year undergraduates at the University of Bristol. All were British, the majority being eighteen or nineteen years old, with no one over twenty-three. Ss came from a variety of faculties and disciplines, but no Psychology students were included. All were unpaid volunteers who were written to and given an appointment. Seven Ss were asked to appear at any one time. The first five to turn up were run in the study; any additional volunteers were run in a different study by another E.


Procedure. All groups were run by one female experimenter in the same room as had been used in the previous study. The physical arrangements and the instructions and procedure for initial individual decisions were the same as for Experi- ment 1.

When all Ss had completed their individual decisions, E collected the questionnaires for a Discussion-to-Consensus condition. Using instructions similar to those used in other studies, E told Ss:

‘I’ve had each of you fill out the questionnaires so that you would become familiar with all the situations it contains. What I’m really interested in is having you discuss each of the situations as a group. I would like you to discuss each item in turn and arrive at a unanimous decision on each. Please remember that a unanimous decision is required on each and not a majority vote.’

Ss were told that they could not return to a previous item, and that each person was to record the group’s decisions. After an opportunity for questions, Ss proceed- ed to discuss each item in turn.

In a small number of cases in which consensus had not been reached after eight minutes of discussion, E then intervened and asked Ss to make one last attempt to come to an agreement. In only three cases (out of a total of 96) consensus was not achieved and after a total of ten minutes these groups were told to go on to the next problem.

When all items had been discussed, Ss were then asked to take another look at the situations and indicate their current personal decisions. They were told that they could put down decisions that were the same or different from the group ones.

Finally, Ss were questioned about any difficulties they may have had in com- pleting the questionnaire, they were given a brief explanation of the research, and they were asked not to discuss the study with other people.

Results

The primary purpose of this study was to test the prediction that shifts on Choice Dilemmas items take the form of discussion pushing a group further in the direction, either risky or cautious, that the individuals in the group are already inclined towards. If initial inclination is measured by the mean of individual decisions, a simple but in certain respects demanding test of the prediction is, decision by decision, to see if the group has in fact moved towards the nearest pole. The neutral region will be regarded as extending from 3.6 to 4.4 * and, with initial

2. With five-person groups the mean of individual decisions always ends in .O, .2, .4,

.6 or .8. The minimum shift that can occur is 0.2.

20 Colin Fraser, Celia Gouge und Michael Billig

decisions which are not neutral, any shift no matter how small will be counted as an instance of either polarization or anti-polarization.

This simple test does not rely on averaging decisions over an item or items over the entire questionnaire. Each comparison between mean of initial decisions and consensus (or initial mean and final mean of individual decisions) is looked at individually, and the test of polarization is quite unambiguous. For polarization to occur a group starting, for example, at 4.6 must fiiove to 5 , 6 or 7 rather than to the larger region of the scale on the other side of its starting point, and, in an extreme case, a group with an initial mean of 2.0 must move to 1.0 to support the prediction.

Table 3 presents a summary of the outcomes of all 96 comparisons of initial means with consensuses and all 96 comparisons of initial means with post-consensus means. Males and females are presented separately, as are initially risky and initially cautious instances.

Table 3. a) Outcome of comparisons of initial means and consensuses

Men Women Total Initially Initially Initially Initially

risky cautious risky cautious Polarization 16 10 16 13 55 Anti-polarization 0 3 2 4 9 No shift 2 1 3 3 9 No consensus 0 0 1 1 2 Initially neutral 16 5 21

96 ~

b) Outcome of comparisons of initial means and post-consensus means

Men Women Total Initially Initially Initially Initially risky cautious risky cautious

15 11 15 16 57 0 2 3 3 8 3 1 4 2 10

21 96

___ 16 5

From Table 3a it can be seen that in twenty-one cases initial decisions fell into the neutral region and in another two cases no consensus emerged. Thus three-quarters of the total number of cases are relevant to testing the polarization prediction. Of

Risky shifts, cautious shifts and group po1ariza:ion 2 1

these, 55 out of the 73 (or almost exactly three-quarters) are instances of polarization. Also, it can be said that a group that is initially inclined towards one alternative is six times as likely, following discussion, to agree on a more polarized position than on a less polarized one. Table 3b reveals an almost identical pattern of results, indicating that the marked polarization effects that occur between initial positions and consensus carry over to the post-consensus positions.

One sample t-tests were performed on the shifts obtained on the initially risky, cautious and neutral decisions presented in Tables 3a and 3b. Table 4 summarises the shifts and the t-tests. Initially risky decisions led to large, highly significant shifts. Initially cautious decisions led to a mean cautious shift of only 0.25, yet the shifts were sufficiently consistent that the mean was significantly different from zero (p < .02). Decisions initially in the neutral region produced a mean risky shift of 0.49 but the standard deviation was sufficiently high that the mean was only just significant (p < .05). In comparisons of initial and final individual decisions, the shifts to risk on initially risky decisions and to caution on initially cautious ones were both highly significant (p < . O O l ) whereas the slight shift on initially neutral decisions did not reach significance.

Table 4. Mean shifts and t-tests on initially risky, neutral and cautious decisions

Initially risky Initially neutral Initially cautious (3.4 or less) (3.6-4.4) (4.6 or more)

Mean Mean Mean shift ‘t’ shift ‘t’ shift ‘t’

Pre- to consensus +0.71 6.72 (p<.OOl) $0.49 2.17 (p<.05) -0.25 2.47 (p<.02) Pre- to post-consensus +0.50 5.36 (p<.OOl) +0.17 1.26 -0.35 4.60 (p<.OOl)

Overall analyses and item analyses were also carried out, Table 5 presents a summary of an overall Analysis of Variance involving Sex of Subject, together with the repeated measures, Type-of-Decision (Pre-Consensus/Post) and Type-of-Item (Risky /Neutral/Cautious).

The type-of-item distinction merits comment. In terms of mean initial scores (overall, and for men and women separately) items 1, 3 and 8 were clearly risky items, and items 2, 5 and 7 cautious ones. Items 4 and 6, however, fell into the neutral region (3.6 to 4.4) for both men and women. It seemed justifiable, there- fore, to make a three-way division of items, To allow for the fact that there were only two neutral items the Analysis of Variance was performed on the averages of items of similar type.


Table 5 . Overall analysis of variance

Source df MS F

Sex of subject (A) Error Pre/consensus/post (B)

Error Risky/neutral/cautious (C)

Error

A x B

A x C

B x C A x B x C Erior

1 10 2 2

20 2 2

20 4 4

40

2.94 3.34 0.88 0.90 22.50 (p<.OOl) 0.25 6.25 (p<.O1) 0.04

106.96 237.69 (p<.OOI) 1.46 3.24 0.45 0.78 13.00 (p<.OOl) 0.01 0.17 0.06

Table 5 shows that both repeated measure main effects were highly significant but that the third main effect, Sex of Subject, did not reach significance. The interaction, Type-of-Decision X Type-of-Item is highly significant, and the Sex of Sub- ject X Type-of-Decision interaction is also significant but at a lower level. If, because of possible unequal correlations between repeated measures, the conservative procedure for assessing F-ratios, recommended by Greenhouse and Geisser is used (see Winer, 1962, pp. 305-306) a11 the above effects remain significant, the only difference being that the level of significance of the Sex of Subject X Type-of- Decision interaction is reduced from p < .01 to p < .05.

Neutral .-/-A

01 0 0

Pre- Consensus Post- consensus mean consensus

mean Fig. 1

'I 01 0 0

Pre- Consensus Post- consensus mean consensus

Fig. 2 mean


The nature of the two significant interaction effects can be better understood from Fig. 1 and 2. From Fig. 1 it can be seen that, summing over items of different types, men reach consensuses that are noticeably riskier than pre-consensus scores, with post-consensus scores being intermediate. Women show only the smallest overall move to risk from pre-consensus to consensus, and pre- and post-consensus scores are equivalent. Given the nature of this interaction, which, with the conservative degrees of freedom proposed by Greenhouse and Geisser, is only moderately significant, together with the absence of a significant main Sex of Subject effect, the procedure to be adopted will be that for certain purposes male and female data will be combined, but where separate anaIyses would have produced different outcomes these will be reported.

Fig. 2 shows that the three risky items produced clear risky shifts from pre-consensus to consensus and from pre- to post-consensus, with the latter being slightly smaller. The neutral items resulted in a smaller risky shift from pre-consensus to consensus and no shift from pre- to post-consensus. The three conservative items overall produced a small conservative shift, pre- to consensus and a somewhat larger one from pre- to post-consensus.

T3ble 6, Item means and shifts

Pre-consen- Pre- to Pre-con- Con- sus to con- One Post-con- post-con- One sensus sensus sensus sample sensus sensus sample

Item mean mean mean shift ‘t’ mean mean shift ‘t’

1 2.83 2.08 2 5.03 5.00 3 2.25 1.25 4 3.78 3.55 5 5.08 5.18 6 3.88 3.45 7 5.70 6.17 8 2.17 1.67

+0.75 +0.03 +1.00 +0.25* -0.05* +0.48* -0.47 +0.50

4.81 (p<.OOI) 0.20 4.74 (p<.OOl) 1.18 0.20 1.43 2.50 (p<.05) 2.44 (v< .05)

2.43 5.12 1.37 3.78 5.30 3.85 6.15 1 .so

+0.40 -0.09 $0.88

0.00 -0.22 +0.03 -0.45 +0.37

3.95 (p<.OI) 0.89 4.17(~<.01) 0.00 1.49 0.11 3.38(p<.01) 2.56 (u<.O5)

* On each of items 4, 5 and 6 one group failed to reach consensus. These cases have been excluded from calculations of the Pre- to consensus shifts, and thus for those calculations the Pre-consensus means are marginally different from those shown here, which are based on twelve cases.

In the light of Fig. 2, it is not surprising that Table 6 reveals that in terms of one-sample t-tests performed on shift scores, each of the three risky items produced


significant risky shifts from initial decisions to consensus. Neither of the neutral items produced a significant shift, although both tended towards shifts to risk. Of the three cautious items only one, item 7 produced a significant cautious shift, the other two resulting in no shifts at all. These conclusions based on male and female subjects combined should be qualified by noting that the risky shifts on items 6 and 8 were more marked for men than for women, and on item 7 the cautious shift was greater for women than for men. Table 6 also shows that similar item analyses on shifts from initial decisions to final individual decisions resulted in similar outcomes, item by item.

Finally, the Spearman rank-order correlations relating to mean initial scores and mean shifts per item are of interest. Mean initial polarization scores per item correlated - 0.90 (p < .02) with mean shifts to risk. Similar correlations using the standard odds-of-success scalc have frequently been found to be significant. That the change from the odds-of-success scale to the polarization one has not markedly altered what is being measured was also implied by two further correla- ticns. When, despite all the variations in the two experiments, initial item scores from the first study were correlated with initial item scores in the second a correlation of + 0.74 resulted (p < . lo); the correlation between mean shifts per item from the two studies was -t 0.95 (p < .02). Largely because of the success of the polarization scale in detecting neutral, non-shifting items, the correlation between initial scores on the second study and shifts on the first one (- 0.90, p < .02) was actually higher than that between initial scores on the first and shifts on the first (- 0.69, p < .lo).

Discussion

From the analysis of results we conclude that polarization has been clearly demonstrated with Choice Dilemmas materials. From analyses in terms of a single group moving from initial decisions through consensus to final decisions it is clear that in the majority of instances groups polarized when either consensus or final decisions were compared with initial decisions, and very rarely did discussion move a group in the opposite direction to the one its members were already inclining towards. Polarization was almost as likely to occur in a cautious direction as in a risky one, although the magnitude of risky shifts was much greater than that of cautious shifts.

At the item level polarization was also, in general, supported. The two items which, in the first study, failed to produce significant shifts proved to be neutral on the polarization scale. In the second study they also failed to shift significantly. The three initially risky items all produced clear risky shifts, two of them at a very


high level of significance. Given the present instructions and scoring scale these risky shifts strongly contradict the claim (Clark and Willems, 1969; Willems and Clark, 1969) that the risky shift phenomena are dependent on Ss being told to indicate ‘the lowest probability. . .’. No mention of ‘lowest probability’ or of ‘minimum odds of success’, was included in the present study. Of the three initially cautious items only one produced significant shifts to caution, although on the comparisons of pre-consensus and post-consensus scores the other two items showed slight tendencies in the same direction. The cautious items, it might be noted, were initially less polarized than the risky ones, and the one item to produce significant cautious shifts was initially the most extreme of the cautious trio.

Thus ‘group polarization’ is a very apt term to apply descriptively to group risk-taking phenomena. At the level of individual decisions, it implies that a group, having for whatever reasons inclined towards one alternative or one pole of a scale, will incline further towards it after discussion. At the level of item analyses, it suggests that if, overall, Ss prefer one alternative, whether because of values and nmms (Stoner, 1968) or because of an imbalance of information and argument in the specific item, then discussions will increase the overall preference. As Mosco- vici and Zavalloni (1969) have pointed out, the notion of group polarization runs counter to assumptions often made about the consensus as an average. But evidence for such polarization effects is beginning to accumulate. The studies of the Paris group have already been referred to. Doise (1969b) has also shown that, unnoticed by the original authors, clear group polarization occurred in a recent study of judgmental styles (Kogan and Wallach, 1966), although individual polarization did not occur.

As yet we can only speculate about the processes that produce the polarization effects. Moscovici and Zavalloni have drawn attention to three possibilities, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They suggest that the occurrence of polariza- t im may depend on subjects becoming more intensely involved or on the meaningfulness of the task increasing or on the certainty of the subjects increasing. The implication, for a discussion situation, is that group discussion can raise the level of one or more of the above for subjects in the group.

An alternative approach, which need not contradict the previous suggestions, would be to relate polarization to existing variations within a group on an item. PLrhaps polarization follows a discussion amongst individuals who vary with regard to involvement, perception of meaningfulness, or confidence. More extreme individuals may, for example, have more confidence in their position (perhaps because it is a clear position) than have individuals taking an initially neutral position, and this differential confidence could influence the course of discussion. In other words, as Ellis, Spencer, and Oldfield-Box (1969) have recently shown, ‘extreme

26 Colin Fraser, Celin Gouge and Michael Billig

member’ hypotheses merit further consideration. We suggest that this is particularly so if the analysis is in terms of extremity on a specific item, rather than in terms of overall extremity as a form of personality variable.

The composition of groups in terms of the initial risk scores of its members has also been studied by Vinokur (1969). With generally risky items, Vinokur found that groups initially skewed towards risk (k. with the median of initial scores riskier than the mean) produced larger risky shifts than groups skewed away from risk. Vinokur’s own data, together with his reanalyses of other studies, strongly supported the position that skewness, although not being capable of accounting for the risky-shift phenomena, does have a significant influence on group shifts. In general this influence is likely to be confounded with, or a part of, polarization processes, since any item with a non-neutral pre-consensus mean is likely to have a distribution of scores that is skewed towards the near pole.

Group polarization processes, then, may result from one or more of the following: the nature of the distribution of initial risk scores in a group: initial score- related variations such as confidence or involvement: changes, with discussion, in the overall level of characteristics such as involvement or certainty. But in addition to such polarization processes it appears that another principle is also required in an account of group risk-taking.

Let us reconsider some of the data in the present paper. The most obvious problem with polarization at the item level was the failure of two of the three cautious items to produce significant cautious shifts in the second study, although significant shifts had been found with all three items in the first study. Compared with the shifts on risky items, even the one significant cautious shift was relatively smaller than in the first study. If these inter-study differences regarding cautious items are taken in conjunction with the tendency of neutral items, in the second study, but not in the first, to move to risk it can be argued that there has been an overall strengthening of risk in the second study compared with the first.

It is suggested that this has arisen primarily through greater clarity of the scoring scale in the second study. What a shift from 5 chances in 10 to 7 chances in 10 really represents in terms of advice to Mr. A may well be debatable. The subject may not be entirely clear whether he is moving from foolhardy risk to reasonable risk or from reasonable risk to neutrality. The scale in the second study leaves much less room for doubt.

The greater explicitness of scoring in the second study encourages moves towards risk and away from caution because, it is hypothesized, there is something akin to a value for risk which operates on all items. This pressure towards risk is a relatively constant factor which interacts with polarization processes. If the polarization pressures also favour risk, as in initially risky items or decisions, large


risky shifts ensue. If the polarization pressures favour caution, as in initially cautious items or decisions, the value for risk has the effect of at least partially coun- te ing these other factors and produces cautious shifts which are smaller than risky shifts. And if polarization pressures are absent, as on relatively neutral items, the general value for risk will result in tendencies towards risky shifts.

Accepting the notion of an overall value for risk is compatible with the difficulty hitherto experienced in writing items which produce significant cautious shifts, although the production of risky shifts has been relatively simple. That people think of themselves as riskier than others, at least on Choice Dilemmas materials, has been clearly demonstrated (Brown, 1965; Wallach and Wing, 1968; Levinger and Schneider, 1969). The data of Levinger and Schneider are particularly interesting with regard to the two Choice Dilemmas items that usually produce cautious shifts (Nos. 5 and 12). On these, unlike on other items, Ss thought that they were more cautious than other people, but Ss also indicated, on these items, that they themselves would like to be riskier than they did in fact allow themselves to be. This suggests that even when responding to pressures to caution, Ss still regarded risk favourably.

Although we propose that there are pressures favouring risk which operate on all items, it is debatable whether these pressures need be regarded as emanating from a general value for risk that would hold in a large number of risky situations in, say, Western societies. The risk factor may be more restricted. Clark and Wil- lems (1969) have proposed that what is responsible is the instruction that Ss indicate ‘the lowest probability. . .’. Although the findings of our second study contradict that specific claim it could be argued that the emphasis in other parts of the instructions that ‘alternative X is more desirable and attractive than alternative Y’ might help to create a greater favourableness towards risk than caution. In short, it is just possible that something more specific than a general value is the ‘risk factor’,

A more interesting possibility, however, is that what is operating is something even more general than a value for risk, namely a preference for positives. Whether one is looking at research on inferences about people (Warr and Knapper, 1968) studies of concept learning (Hovland and Weiss, 1953) or investigations of sentence comprehension (Wason, 1965), a recurrent theme is the preference that Ss have for positive inferences or instances or grammatical constructions. Miller and McNeill (1969) have noted that four centuries ago the general point was succinctly made by Francis Bacon, ‘It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human in- tellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives’. Given the Choice Dilemmas instructions and scoring perhaps the cautious alternatives is seen as negative, as not taking the risk, rather than as a positive act in its own right. And our intuitions, as well as the richness of the ‘rhetoric of risk’ (Kelley


and Thibaut, 1969) tell us that, in general, risk is seen as more positive than caution. But if, for once, risk could be presented simply as ‘not caution’, perhaps the apparent value for risk would disappear.

It should be noted that, of the factors invoked to account for group risk-taking phenomena, only the value for risk might prove to be risk-specific. Polarization processes, including the effects of skewing, do not appear to be content-bound concepts. They could conceivably operate in any type of group discussion, and group polarization may even share some features of polarization processes that can be demonstrated in individual situations involving judgment (Tajfel and Wilkes, 1963) or the evaluation of complex stimuli (Willis, 1960). Thus a complete account of group risk-taking will require an understanding of processes that extend far beyond the shift to risk with which we started.

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