Entscheidungsqualität als Funktion der Informationsmenge: Vorteile kleiner und großer Informationsstichproben in individuellen und Gruppenentscheidungen

01/10/2014 to 31/03/2016

The research project outlined in this proposal is intended to represent an extension of the research grant “Decision Quality as a Function of the Amount of Information: Myths and Facts about Intuitive Decision Making” awarded to Klaus Fiedler in the preceding funding stage of the research group “Contextualized decision making”. There are numerous empirical phenomena that highlight the power and simple beauty of intuitive decisions based on minimal samples of information. However, those can be contrasted against equally prominent aggregation effects that highlight information gains through increasing sample size. The goal of the project is to investigate the boundary conditions for small-sample and large-sample advantages on decision quality. Specifically, we intend to elaborate and refine our theoretical approach in several ways. Raising our approach to a more comprehensive level, we intend to examine decision quality as a function of three types of information: In addition to the number of observations n, and the number of cues or attribute dimensions k, social decisions in groups and democratic settings also vary in the number j of persons (group members, consultants, advisers) who contribute knowledge and observations. From that framework we derive several hypotheses to be tested in the second funding-period reaching from the individual influences of the three information types on judgment and decision making, including their mediators and moderators, to their interactive effects.