Sun 9 Mar 2014 4:43AM
Hide vote results until set threshold/date
Jeff Swift
Public
Seen by 81
Research into group dynamics suggests a phenomenon known as "group polarization," which is basically that people are heavily influenced by the first few people who express an opinion in settings like these. There is a host of reasons behind this behavior, but it has a lot to do with saving face and wanting to seem intelligent and thoughtful by agreeing with the majority. This sort of thing happens largely subconsciously, and seems unavoidable.
Because of this, it seems to me that the vote results should be hid from participant view until after that participant has voted, or until a predetermined criterion has been met that officially closes voting. Otherwise the group dynamics might be innocently tainted by polarization.
Simon · Wed 15 Feb 2017 10:22PM
Voting on a proposal sounds like the end of a process, the full stop. In my experience, it rarely is, especially for complex issues. There will always be unanticipated consequences, learning and new ways of understanding things. All of which creates an imperative to revisit past decisions. Sometimes hardly any time passes before a decision is revisited, sometimes it could be years.
For me, decision making is the time for individual and collective learning. That's why I strongly support practices such as discussions and the structured exploration of perspectives before making proposals, and I strongly support reason-giving when voting as this can lead to further individual and group reflection, causing people to change their votes and/or the creation of improved proposals. I'd be very concerned if changes resulted in the group not being able to see the reasons behind votes as they are being cast. I also wonder how many people are aware that they can change their votes, i.e. that decision-making is a dynamic learning process, and whether there are ways to make this clearer.
I agree with groups being able to decide their own strategies and processes as Loomio is used in a wide range of contexts. For example, for groups made of people who know each other or share an affiliation with an organisation, power and status dynamics can adversely affect not only voting/decision-making but all communication/discussion. In this situation, an organiser might consider requiring all participants to use a pseudonym. But in other situations, e.g. some time-limited public engagement processes, participants may not have prior relations so power and status dynamics resulting in 'group think' might not be such a concern.