Organizational Psychology

The article is devoted to the research of various social and psychological phenomena arising in group decision-making process having a social dilemma inside the challenge. The problem’s investigation became the purpose of the pilot research described in the paper: Whether individual pragmatism and rational strategy are reflected in a group choice of the solution of the task containing a social dilemma. How are the group phenomena are revealing in course of the task containing a social dilemma solving? Whether facilitations’ mechanisms contribute to the increased ethical aspect of the social dilemma solution in the group which participants’ opinions are polarized? The students of “Economy” and “Management” academic majors acted as respondents of the research (N=10, 40% ofwomen, 60% of men, age of 19-24 years). At the first stage by means of the associative test the individual ideas of participants about the decision-making were revealed. At the second stage, working in small groups, the participants solved an author’s case which conditions were supplemented with the new facts (according to a dynamic paradigm of indeterminacy), proceeding from the decisions developed in the previous rounds. At the third stage two small groups which accepted polar alternatives as the decision were united in one, in the purpose of finding the common agreed decision of the case. The results of the research led to a number of the conclusions demanding further studying and discussion, in particular: the pragmatism and rational strategy of decision-making revealed during associative test do not completely reflect in a real situation of the task solving; presence of the strong leaders was aggravated the effects of “social loafing” and “groupthink”, sharply reducing the quantity of the initiatives generated for decision-making. The facilitation contributed to the creation of conditions for the development of the joint decision due to the mitigation of the incorrect negative motivational influence and the destructive effects of cognitive distortions. The design approbated in the pilot research could be extrapolated on the target group, for example, on managers of a business organization.