A Partition of Small Group Predecision Performance into Informational and Social Components.
Abstract
New theoretical and methodological techniques for partitioning and identifying the sources of performance differences between groups and individuals in hypothesis and act generation tasks are presented in two experiments. Experiment 1 presents a two-component model which separates group performance into informational and social components. The model proposes that the pooling of information in an interacting group (the information component) is mediated by the social factors (e.g., level of arousal, cohesiveness, etc.) which are present in a given situation. Interacting groups were found to be inferior to nominal groups in a hypothesis generation task. Thus, in Experiment 1, the social component was found to have a negative effect on performance. Experiment 2 further partitions the social component into a social information component which accounts for the additional information which becomes available as a result of group interaction and a social, non-informational component which consists of purely social factors. The social information component estimates the synergistic effect of group interaction on information retrieval and problem solving. The social informational component was estimated by including a group of subjects who exchanged ideas (information) via computers but had no social interaction.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 30, 1982
- Accession Number
- ADA120714
Entities
People
- Charles F. Gettys
- Jeff T. Casey
- Rebecca M. Pliske
- Tom Mehle
Organizations
- University of Oklahoma