Averaging versus Sampling in Collaborative Judgement

How does a dyad combine information from different members in order to arrive at a consensus judgement? One suggestion is that groups combine information in a Bayes optimal fashion: the group calculates a weighted average of individuals' estimates, with the weightings being proportional to the quality of the information each individual possesses. Alternatively, the dyad may seek to identify which member's estimate is the best, and return that as a joint judgement. These models were tested by asking members of a dyad to make private estimates of a continuous quantity (the direction of movement of a coherent motion stimulus), and to then make a joint judgement. Joint judgements were more accurate than individual judgements, but were only partly based on optimal integration. Rather, the joint judgements were often in the neighbourhood of one of the individual judgements, or an uninformed average of the two judgements. Regression analyses suggest that dyads sampled from the alternative responses according to their initial disagreement, and their relative accuracy, on a trial-by-trial basis. Rather than learning about each others' ability, dyad members appear to rely on communication of estimated precision when forming judgements, and often resolve discrepancies by taking the best guess.

How Employee Selection Decisions are Made in Practice

Existing literature on employee selection contains an abundance of knowledge of how selection should take place but almost nothing about how it occurs in practice. This paper presents an ethnomethodological-discourse analytical real-time study of how selection decisions are made in situ. The main findings suggest that selection decision making is characterized by ongoing practical deliberation involving four interrelated discursive processes: assembling versions of the candidates; establishing the versions of the candidates as factual; reaching selection decisions; and using selection tools as sensemaking devices. In addition, this paper identifies two basic forms of selection decision making: one characterized by initial agreement and one characterized by initial disagreement. In each basic form of decision making, selectors reason through the four discursive processes in a methodical, situated and practical manner in order to construct local versions of the candidates and make ‘reasonable’ selection decisions.