Information technology support for debiasing group judgments: An empiricalevaluation

Human judgments, made by either individuals or groups, have been found to c ontain biases, One of the most prevalent biases identified is the availabil ity bias, associated with the phenomenon that events which are more availab le to human memory are correspondingly judged as occurring more frequently or as being more important. This paper is concerned with how to reduce the availability bias in the group context. It reports an experiment in which t wo computer-based support facilities, electronic brainstorming and electron ic mail, were tested for their contributions to reducing the availability b ias, A 2 x 2 experimental design was used: electronic brainstorming (availa ble or not) and communication mode (electronic or verbal). Forty teams of t hree members each were asked to work on a task involving the rating of the importance of a number of items associated with a secretary's task. Both el ectronic brainstorming and electronic communication helped reduce the avail ability bias. In both cases, the reduction in bias was dire to increased at tention paid to items that were found to have low availability in the absen ce of these support tools, (C) 2000 Academic Press.