How does certainty evolve in group decisions?

In group decisions by consensus, being more certain does not imply making a better decision. In social psychology, certainty is the degree to which a person is sure that the decision made is correct (accurate). For a while, people thought that group decisions increase decision accuracy, but recent research showed that only the certainty of the decision increases under these circumstances (Punchochar and Fox, 2004). Researchers also thought that under certain conditions, group discussions may lead to an increase in knowledge connected to the decision task, but Fidler and Kareev (2006) proposed an experiment in which an increase in the quantity of information made participants more uncertain. In their experiment, a smaller sample of information lead to an increase in the accuracy of decisions. Their observation was explained by the fact that smaller samples can have a wider variation. read more