ABSTRACT
There are many reasons why almost all human societies rely on small groups to make important decisions. Groups, in comparison to individuals, are better able to represent a diversity of goals and values, they distribute the responsi bility for consequential decisions, and they elicit commitment to a course of action from many actors at once. It is also hoped that, under some circum stances, groups can make more accurate and more reliable decisions than individuals. One commonly cited condition for the superiority of group decisions is the situation where different members of the group bring relevant, unshared, independent, and valid information to the group decision process. Under such conditions, it is hard not to believe that “several heads are better than one.”
