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) which are present in a given situation (the social component). 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 and the information component was found to be positive. 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, noninformational component which consists of purely social factors. The social information component estimates the synergistic effect of group interaction on information retrieval. The social informational component was estimated by including a group of subjects who exchanged ideas (information) via computers but had no social interaction. The “information exchange” group was found to be somewhat superior to a nominal group in an act generation task, and both of these groups were superior to an interacting group. Experiment 2 illustrates that even when the social, noninformational component has a negative effect on the informational component, the social information component may have a positive effect.