Group Polarization

群体极化

• 批准号: 0421852
• 负责人: Debraj Ray
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-08-15 至 2008-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0421852&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Group; Polarization

It is self-evident that in society, many if not the most important decisions are made by groups. Group involvement is endemic, whether it be voting among large populations or deliberation by small committees. A standard view of group decision-making is that it facilitates exchanges of ideas and information, which necessarily lead to better outcomes. This view stands in contrast to a striking empirical regularity, dubbed group polarization, whereby members of a deliberating group predictably move toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by the members' predeliberation tendencies. The aim of this project is to bridge the gap between the standard naive view of group decision-making and the empirical literature.The project focuses on two distinct processes of group polarization. The first process operates in group decisions over risky prospects, where group members exhibit choice-shifts: They tend to take on more extreme levels of risk (either riskier or more cautious), relative to the levels of risk they would accept as individuals outside the group. The researchers propose an explanation for choice shifts, which is based on a model of individual decision-making. Hence, the framework they offer applies not only to choice shifts observed in groups but also to commonly observed biases in individual decision making. The second process analyzed in this proposal operates in groups that face a threat of disagreement. This threat plays an important role in explaining the fact that preference intensities matter in group interaction, and do so in non-additive ways. The researchers propose a dynamic model of group deliberation where each member wishes to implement a distinct policy, and the favorite policy of each member imposes externalities on the other members. The researchers discuss how this model can accommodate notions of `extremism' and `tolerance', and offer a methodology to study the formal relation between these two concepts. The proposed framework has the potential of allowing the researchers to rank different supermajority rules by the level of `extremism' that they impose in equilibrium.

不言而喻，在社会中，许多（如果不是最重要的）决定是由群体做出的。团体参与是一种普遍现象，无论是在大量人口中投票还是在小型委员会中审议。对群体决策的一个标准看法是，它促进了思想和信息的交流，这必然会带来更好的结果。这一观点与一个显著的经验规律形成了鲜明的对比，即所谓的群体极化，即审议群体的成员可以预见地朝着成员审议前倾向所指示的方向走向一个更极端的点。这个项目的目的是弥合群体决策的标准朴素观点和经验文献之间的差距。第一个过程在群体对风险前景的决策中起作用，群体成员表现出选择转移：他们倾向于承担更极端的风险水平（风险更大或更谨慎），相对于他们作为群体外的个人所接受的风险水平。研究人员提出了一种基于个人决策模型的选择转变解释。因此，他们提供的框架不仅适用于群体中观察到的选择转变，也适用于个人决策中常见的偏见。本建议中分析的第二个过程在面临分歧威胁的群体中运作。这种威胁在解释偏好强度在群体互动中起着重要作用，并且以非添加剂的方式起着重要作用。研究人员提出了一个动态的群体审议模型，其中每个成员都希望实施一个独特的政策，每个成员最喜欢的政策对其他成员施加了外部性。研究人员讨论了这一模式如何适应“极端主义”和“容忍”的概念，并提供了一种研究这两个概念之间正式关系的方法。拟议的框架有可能使研究人员能够按照“极端主义”的程度对不同的绝对多数规则进行排序，这些规则是在均衡中强加的。