Wang, Ziming and Zhu, Liping and Maguire, Phil and Liu, Yixin and Pang, Kaiyuan and Li, Zhenying and Hu, Yixin (2016) The Influence of Social Comparison and Peer Group Size on Risky Decision-Making. Frontiers in Psychology, 7 (1232). ISSN 1664-1078

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Abstract

This study explores the influence of different social reference points and different comparison group sizes on risky decision-making. Participants were presented with a scenario describing an exam, and presented with the opportunity of making a risky decision in the context of different information provided about the performance of their peers. We found that behavior was influenced, not only by comparison with peers, but also by the size of the comparison group. Specifically, the larger the reference group, the more polarized the behavior it prompted. In situations describing social loss, participants were led to make riskier decisions after comparing themselves against larger groups, while in situations describing social gain, they become more risk averse. These results indicate that decision making is influenced both by social comparison and the number of people making up the social reference group.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Citation: Wang D, Zhu L, Maguire P, Liu Y, Pang K, Li Z and Hu Y (2016) The Influence of Social Comparison and Peer Group Size on Risky Decision-Making. Front. Psychol. 7:1232. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01232 Copyright © 2016 Wang, Zhu, Maguire, Liu, Pang, Li and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Keywords:	social reference points; risky decision making; peer group influence; social framing; social comparison;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Computer Science
Item ID:	10340
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01232
Depositing User:	Phil Maguire
Date Deposited:	18 Dec 2018 15:27
Journal or Publication Title:	Frontiers in Psychology
Publisher:	Frontiers Media
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	https://www.frontiersin.org/
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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