Cueing and Cognitive Conflict in Judge-Advisor Decision Making

The Judge-Advisor paradigm (Sniezek & Buckley, 1989) allows for the study of decision making by groups with differentiated roles. This paper reports a study using this approach to investigate the impact of advice vis-à-vis the judge′s own initial choice. Teams consisting of one judge and two advisors (business students randomly assigned to these roles) were given a choice task (concerning business events) composed of 70 items with two alternatives each. The judges provided final team choices and confidence assessments under one of three conditions: Dependent (judge has no basis for own choice), Cued (judge chooses only after being advised), or Independent (judges makes own tentative choice prior to being advised as well as subsequent final choice). Results showed that this manipulation affected the judge′s final choice accuracy and confidence, leading to the best performance by Independent judges and the poorest by Dependent judges. These data are discussed with respect to theory and data on the cueing effect (Sniezek, Paese, & Switzer, 1990) for individual choice. In addition, the effects on the decision making process of the judge from (a) advisors′ confidence and (b) conflict between advisors′ recommendations are examined in detail. Finally, issues concerning the potential contribution of the Judge-Advisor paradigm to the understanding of social decision making are addressed.