Exploring Team Familiarity as a Buffer to External Conformity Pressure in Decision-Making Teams

Abstract

Decision-making teams routinely face pressure from external stakeholders to conform to their preferences. Yet literature on conformity pressure is overwhelmingly focused on individuals conforming to others within (not outside) their groups, and literature on accountability to external stakeholders is focused on individuals acting independently (without respect to a team context). In this paper, we consider conformity pressure as applied to a collective decision-making team and how such pressure can be alleviated when team members have strong intragroup relationships in the form of high team familiarity. We examine our predictions in the context of NCAA football officiating crews facing pressure from audiences to call penalties that unduly favor the home team, a phenomenon known as the home field advantage bias. Results reveal that, as audience conformity pressure increases, officiating crews with high familiarity are less likely to conform to the pressure to call more penalties on the visiting team. Moreover, this effect results in fewer home team wins, representing an attenuation of conformity to external pressure. These findings contribute to research on team decision-making effectiveness, conformity in team contexts, and the benefits of team familiarity.