Cognitive effort in additive task groups: The effects of shared responsibility on the quality of multiattribute judgments

The two experiments described here use mathematical models of judgment strategies to assess cognitive effort in a multiattribute judgment task. It was hypothesized that judges who shared responsibility for the judgment task would exert less cognitive effort than judges bearing sole responsibility for outcomes. In Experiment 1, 23 males were led to believe they were participating in a study of college student work preferences and evaluated a series of job descriptions. Consistent with hypotheses, those who believed responsibility for the task was shared produced fewer evaluations and used less complex judgment strategies than individual evaluators. In Experiment 2, 41 males and females performed the same judgment task. Again, the results supported predictions. Individual judges used more of the available information and were more predictable from a linear model than multiple evaluators. Psychological explanations for this effect are proposed and future research is suggested.