Dyadic decision as a function of the frequency distributions describing the preferences of members' constituencies

Describes an experiment with 246 undergraduates in which dyads discussed and reached a decision about either of 2 social issues: the percentage of university control that should be invested with students and the percentage of the national budget that should be spent on pollution control. For each issue, 3 different group compositions were created by assigning Ss who had been differently obligated by constituencies to whom they were responsible. The summary obligation was in the form of a distribution of preferences about the proportion of constituents favoring each of the decision alternatives. Several stochastic models, assuming different social decision schemes, were derived and tested against the dyadic decision distributions. The model which states that members would move through equal distances to a midpoint between them received the most support, although some cases supported the alternative model that each member would be equally likely to win the decision for his position. Both decision schemes could be regarded as variations on the notion of an equalitarian social process.