Resumen de Risky and cautious decision shifts in small groups

Timothy R. Cline, Rebecca J. Cline

• Research revealed a trend for discussion groups to reach decisions taking greater risks than the group members would recommend individually. While noting the social importance of this phenomenon, no investigators have examined the communication resulting in decision shifts. This investigation attempts to identify and compare the patterns of communication of groups making risky‐and cautious‐decision shifts. Risky‐and cautious‐shift group discussions displayed nonrandom and statistically different distributional and sequential structures. The findings were discussed in terms of two explanations of the risky‐shift phenomenon.