Exploring Cognitive Biases, Groupthink, and Polythink Syndrome in Security Decisions and Business Outcomes

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Luisa Dall'Acqua
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
The Other ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Business Decisions ◽  
Business Outcomes ◽  
Clear Cut

Cognitive bias among workers can undermine security work and lead to critical misinterpretations of data. Understanding cognitive biases can improve understanding of how employees make decisions. This work analyzes key factors to better understand, predict, and obviate the detrimental bias symptoms, focusing on groupthink and polythink phenomena occurring in security and business decisions. It intends to provide support for the strategic versus tactical hypothesis in a strategic group decision-making, confirming how even in a clear-cut decision, following a groupthink or polythink dynamic, implementation becomes difficult due to a group dynamics at the other end of the decision-making continuum.

Cognitive Bias and its Relationship to Decision Making: the Case of Talented Secondary Students in Jeddah: الانحياز المعرفي وعلاقته باتخاذ القرار لدى عينة من طالبات المرحلة الثانوية الموهوبات بمدينة جدة

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (45) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalal Hamid Al-Dhahri, Arwa Abdullah Al-Ghamdi, Mogeda El-Sa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Random Sampling ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
School Administration ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Descriptive Method

This study aims at investigating the relationship between cognitive biases and decision making from a sample of gifted secondary students. It also aims at identifying the level of students’ cognitive biases and decision making and the differences in these two areas based on different classrooms. Random sampling was used to collect data from 139 female secondary students from the gifted group. Their age ranged between (16-18) with an average of (16.6), A descriptive method was adopted in the study. The research tools used consisted of DACOBS David Assessment of Cognitive biases Scale (Vander Gaag. et al., 2000), translated and standardized by the present researchers, and Tuistra’s decision making scale for teenagers (Tuinstra, et al., 2000). The findings of the study show a negative correlation between cognitive biases and decision making. Also, there were no differences between cognitive biases and decision making scores based on different classrooms. The study also shows a low level of students’ cognitive biases and a high level of decision making. The study recommends activating the role of mentors and students' counseling, planning for the values and behaviors that need to be acquired by students by including them in the annual goals of the school administration and participating in societal awareness and education.

Leaderless Group Decisions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seong-Jae Min
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Leaderless Group

Leaderless group decision-making denotes the idea that political decisions from a non-hierarchical discussion structure can be more legitimate and effective than those from a hierarchical structure. Since the latter half of the 20th century, such decision-making has been practiced widely in community groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), “deliberation” forums, as well as in the business and management settings. While one may argue its origins go back to Athenian direct democracy, it was the zeal of the 1960s participatory democracy movement in the United States that produced the more sophisticated principles, philosophies, and mechanics of leaderless group decision-making. The progressive social movement activists at that time considered non-hierarchical groups as ethically appropriate to their causes. Since then, this tradition of leaderless group decision-making processes has been adopted in many grassroots social movements. Debates and controversies abound concerning leaderless group decision-making. It has been a normative imperative for many social activists to adopt decision-making in a leaderless manner. Research to date, however, has produced no conclusive evidence that leaderless group discussion results in better or more effective decisions. Proponents argue that members of a leaderless group would develop greater capacities for self-governance because in such a setting they can take more personal and egalitarian initiatives to organize activities of the group. This, in turn, would lead to better group dynamics and discussion, and, eventually, better decisions. Critics suggest that leaderless groups are slow and inflexible in decision-making and that the supposedly leaderless groups usually end up with leaders because of the social dynamics and human nature present in group interactions. Regardless of its potential benefits and problems, the ideals of deliberative and participatory democracy are strongly propelling this egalitarian, discourse-based form of group decision-making. Researchers will gain a great deal of insight from literature in deliberation concerning the functions, problems, and future directions of leaderless groups. In addition, there is a need to study leaderless groups in a more multi-faceted way, as research to date has been dominated by psychology-based quantitative assessment of groups. Qualitative and ethnographic approaches will be helpful to further assess the dynamics of leaderless group decision-making.

Entrepreneurial Innovative Network and the Design of Socio-Economic Neural Systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Olga Tikhomirova
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Innovation System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual

This article aims to establish how an idea becomes an innovation and how creativity, collective dynamics, and information are interconnected. The results of the author's study showed that the emergence of innovations is closely connected with collective collaboration, and that it is impossible outside of group dynamics. The process of self-organization and collective decision-making is realized through a synergistic interaction, which then transforms into the so-called “information laser” and serves as a basis for the emergence of innovation. Both individuals, as persons and as separate entrepreneurs, are the elements of the innovation system and the actors of the artificial neural network, socio-economic neural systems (SENS-systems). These systems act through self-organization and corporate collaboration, and the efforts of each element are amplified through the interaction with the other elements. The model of the SENS-systems can explain how the individual idea transforms into innovation and spreads throughout the world.

Group Decision-Making Effectiveness as a Function of Physical Arrangement

1979 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-115
Author(s):  
Hal W. Hendrick
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
The Other ◽  
Male Students ◽  
Conference Room ◽  
Room Design ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Seating Arrangements ◽  
Murder Trial

After viewing the first 28 minutes of the film, Twelve Angry Men, 60 groups of eight male students each were randomly assigned to one of six different physical seating arrangements. Each student first made a private ranking of the order in which he thought the jurors in a murder trial would change their vote from “guilty” to “not guilty”. Group members then worked toward a consensual ranking. The consensual rankings of the groups placed in a circle arrangement with no table were found more accurate (p < .05) than those for groups placed in the other five arrangements, all of which utilized work tables. Potential implications for conference room design and furnishings were noted, along with suggestions for follow-on research.

scholarly journals The odd case when cognitive biases are more prevalent in researchers than in samples

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose D. Perezgonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Result Interpretation

Walmsley and Gilbey (2016) reported on the impact of cognitive biases on pilots’ decision-making, concluding that there was strong evidence that cognitive bias impacted decision making thus putting pilots' lives in danger. However, their methodology was not free of the same biases they set to research and, more importantly, they relied far too much on statistical significance as the only standard for result interpretation. Consequently, while the results obtained may have been technically correct, their divorce from the underlying methodological context made them factually wrong. Therefore, the conclusions achieved also misrepresented the true impact of cognitive biases on pilots' decision-making.

scholarly journals Measuring individual differences in cognitive biases: The Cognitive Bias Inventory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Berthet ◽  
Vincent de Gardelle
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Temporal Stability ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Wrong Answer ◽  
Outcome Bias

This article described the behavioral measurement of six classic cognitive biases (framing, availability, anchoring, overconfidence, hindsight/outcome bias, confirmation bias). Each measure showed a satisfactory level of reliability with regard both to internal consistency (mean Cronbach’s alpha = .77) and temporal stability (mean test-retest correlation = .71). Multivariate analysis supported the hypothesis that each cognitive bias captures specific decision-making processes as the six biases: (a) were virtually uncorrelated (mean correlation = .08), thus indicating no general decision-making competence factor, (b) were moderately correlated with other relevant constructs (the A-DMC components, cognitive ability, decision-making styles, and personality factors), (c) were more related to performance on a narrow domain of decision-making (the ability to overcome an intuitive wrong answer as measured by the CRT) than to the general success in real-life decision-making as measured by the Decision Outcomes Inventory (DOI). We introduce this set of behavioral tasks as the Cognitive Bias Inventory (CBI), a psychometric tool allowing for the reliable assessment of individual differences in six common, independent cognitive shortcuts. The CBI appears as a useful tool for future research on decision-making competence and how it relates to decision errors.

Cognitive Biases

2018 ◽  
pp. 214-235
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Bias ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Strategic Decisions

This chapter will describe some implications of using cognitive biases in the decision-making process in social areas such as economic, legal, education, and political. The cognitive bias would be a pattern of deviation in judgment, in which the inferences that we make about other people and/or situations can be illogical. Moreover, different studies have found that even strategic decisions that affect the society can be influenced by these biases. Therefore, it is important to be aware of them to try to detect and reduce them. Above all, it is necessary to teach how to detect them in order to reduce them in public professionals.

scholarly journals A decision-making support model for enterprises localization strategies

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Marzia Morena ◽  
Maria Luisa Del Gatto ◽  
Anna Gornati
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Location Choice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Location Decisions ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Development Scenarios ◽  
The One

Purpose – The paper aims at describing a supporting model for the decision-making process that may steer the location decisions of international businesses. This is made possible by a measurement system where the characteristics of a territory are assessed with reference to some key factors that are internationally known to investors, to the aim of spotting the best location to implement a property investment. Design/methodology/approach – The surveys analysed when producing this paper highlighted the presence of internationally renowned and shared factors that the enterprises generally take into consideration in their decision-making process, and which strongly influence the decision to locate a business in a territory to the detriment of another. By adopting and organizing these “key factors” in a systemic way, the model introduced in this paper supports enterprises in their location choice. It analyses and measures some territorial contexts (with no limits regarding their size) based on the scores assigned to these contexts after the analysis of the 12 key factors. Findings – The analysis had two outputs: on the one hand, its results allowed to check whether the areas are actually in line with the expectations and with the requirements of a potential investor, with reference to the activity that such investor is willing to promote; on the other, the identification of the characteristics of the area provides the basis to define the vocation of the areas under examination, thus helping the drawing of future development scenarios. Originality/value – The surveys analysed when producing this paper highlighted the presence of internationally renowned and shared factors that the enterprises generally take into consideration in their decision-making process, and which strongly influence the decision to locate a business in a territory to the detriment of another.

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