Learning to communicate risk information in social groups

Despite vigorous research on risk communication, little is known about the social forces that drive these choices. Erev, Wallsten, & Neal (1991) showed that forecasters learn to select vague or precise risk estimations as a function of what best serves the group's collective interests. This study extends the notion and further investigates whether evaluation apprehension contributes to the selection of the risk expressions. We hypothesize that group size and public feedback can engender apprehension and affect the learning of risk communication. Experiment 1 reproduced Erev et al.'s (1991) results and in addition showed that forecasters in small groups learned the optimal mode faster than those in larger groups. Experiment 2 contrasted social versus personal feedback and showed learning was faster in the personal feedback condition

THE EFFECT OF GOAL DISTANCE ON GOAL VALUE AND ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT

Escalation of commitment describes individuals' tendencies to persist in a chosen course of action. The traditional account of escalation of commitment assumes that sunk cost is the primary antecedent for this behavior. However, it has been noted that high sunk costs are confounded with progress made toward a goal and hidden payoff information. Thus, the apparent escalation tendency may be a consequence of goal proximity and information search rather than of sunk costs. Experiments 1 and 2 show that individuals' tendencies to escalate reflect the classical goal-gradient effect after controlling for the sunk costs. Moreover, Experiment 1 also shows that controlling for progress toward the goal, increased sunk costs decreases escalation. In addition, Experiment 2 shows that individuals attribute more value to the goal as they get closer to it, thus providing an alternative explanation for escalation of commitment. Experiments 3a and 3b demonstrate that individuals committed to a course also devalue other course of actions not chosen. These results suggest a new interpretation for escalation of commitment and new approaches to guiding people to avoid it

Creative destruction in science

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question the original findings, but also to replace them with revised, stronger theories with greater explanatory power. Achieving this will typically require adding new measures, conditions, and subject populations to research designs, in order to carry out conceptual tests of multiple theories in addition to directly replicating the original findings. To illustrate the value of the creative destruction approach for theory pruning in organizational scholarship, we describe recent replication initiatives re-examining culture and work morality, working parents\u2019 reasoning about day care options, and gender discrimination in hiring decisions. Significance statement It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, published research findings across scientific fields are not readily replicable when the same method is repeated. Although extremely valuable, failed replications risk leaving a theoretical void\u2014 reducing confidence the original theoretical prediction is true, but not replacing it with positive evidence in favor of an alternative theory. We introduce the creative destruction approach to replication, which combines theory pruning methods from the field of management with emerging best practices from the open science movement, with the aim of making replications as generative as possible. In effect, we advocate for a Replication 2.0 movement in which the goal shifts from checking on the reliability of past findings to actively engaging in competitive theory testing and theory building. Scientific transparency statement The materials, code, and data for this article are posted publicly on the Open Science Framework, with links provided in the article

Learning to communicate risk information in groups

Despite vigorous research on risk communication, little is known about the social forces that drive these choices. Erev, Wallsten, and Neal (1991) showed that forecasters learn to select verbal or numerical probability estimates as a function of which mode yields on average the larger group payoffs. We extend the result by investigating the effect of group size on the speed with which forecasters converge on the better communication mode. On the basis of social facilitation theory we hypothesized that small groups induce less arousal and anxiety among their members than do large groups when performing new tasks, and therefore that forecasters in small groups will learn the better communication mode more quickly. This result obtained in Experiment 1, which compared groups of size 3 to groups of size 5 or 6. To test whether social loafing rather than social facilitation was mediating the effects, Experiment 2 compared social to personal feedback holding group size constant at 3 members. Learning was faster in the personal feedback condition, suggesting that social facilitation rather than loafing underlay the results

Learning to communicate risk information in groups

Despite vigorous research on risk communication, little is known about the social forces that drive these choices. Erev, Wallsten, \& Neal (1991) showed that forecasters learn to select verbal or numerical probability estimates as a function of which mode yields on average the larger group payoffs. We extend the result by investigating the effect of group size on the speed with which forecasters converge on the better communication mode. On the basis of social facilitation theory we hypothesized that small groups induce less arousal and anxiety among their members than do large groups when performing new tasks, and therefore that forecasters in small groups will learn the better communication mode more quickly. This result obtained in Experiment 1, which compared groups of size 3 to groups of size 5 or 6. To test whether social loafing rather than social facilitation was mediating the effects, Experiment 2 compared social to personal feedback holding group size constant at 3 members. Learning was faster in the personal feedback condition, suggesting that social facilitation rather than loafing underlay the results.probabilities, probability judgment, risk communication, group size.