Group decision quality, conscientiousness and competition

This experimental study examined the effects of conscientiousness and competition on group decision quality. The participants of this study (240 undergraduate students, 175 females, and 65 males) were divided into 40 groups of High-conscientiousness (HC) traits and 40 groups of Low-conscientiousness (LC) traits. Each group consisted of three people. The task was to make a group decision in two different settings, with and without competition. The exact logistic regression showed that HC personality significantly increased the risk of bad group decisions. It is likely that the inability of the HC group to adapt their strategy in problem-solving inhibits their performance in producing the quality group decision. The competition condition does not affect the quality. Nevertheless, there is an interaction effect of conscientiousness and competition in influencing the quality of group decisions.