European Business Schools Librarian's Group
Department of Economics Working Papers,
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics
No 388: Are more heads more motivated than one? The role of communication in group belief updating
Lata Gangadharan (), Philip J. Grossman () and Nina Xue ()
Additional contact information
Lata Gangadharan: Department of Economics, Monash University
Philip J. Grossman: Department of Economics, Monash University
Nina Xue: Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU)
Abstract: Many decisions are made by groups under uncertainty, with beliefs playing a critical role. However, less is known about how groups, often driven by self-serving motivations, aggregate these beliefs. In an experiment, we examine how groups form and update beliefs following communication and compare these to individual beliefs. We find that beliefs do not differ initially, however, group deliberation facilitates more motivated updating as groups become more pessimistic and less accurate than individuals over time. Text analyses reveal that groups with stronger self-serving motives send a larger volume of messages and are less likely to be anchored by initial proposals.
Keywords: belief updating, group decision making, self-serving bias, communication, experiment
JEL-codes: C91; C92; D23; D83 December 2025
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