How groups reach agreement in risky choices: an experiment

Marco Casari and Jingjing Zhang

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: This paper studies how groups resolve disagreement when they must reach unanimity after submitting individual proposals and exchanging text-form messages via a chat window in lottery choice experiments. We find that the majority proposal does not always prevail. The minority proposal prevails sometimes, especially when it is closer to risk neutrality. About one third of the groups disagrees after communication and would have got zero payoffs if disagreement remains after two more attempts without communication. In these groups, extrovert subjects are more likely to lead the group outcome than confused or conscientious subjects. Overall group choices are more coherent and closer to risk neutrality than individuals . Checking the recorded messages, we find that the chat activity is intense, growing with the level of disagreement and aims at finding consensus. The amount and timing of chat messages help us to predict which choice prevails in the group.

Date: 2009-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/4581/1/665.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: HOW GROUPS REACH AGREEMENT IN RISKY CHOICES: AN EXPERIMENT (2012)
Working Paper: How groups reach agreement in risky choices: an experiment (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:665

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().