Manipulating a synchronous or separatist group orientation to improve performance on a hidden profile task

Abstract

Effective use of available information is a problem that plagues group decision-making tasks. Groups heavily favor shared information, or information that is known to all group members, which can lead to incorrect decisions and selection of inferior alternatives. However, groups may be less prone to overlooking unshared information if they are focused to value uniqueness and novel input from group members. The present research demonstrates that groups that value uniqueness, or a separatist orientation, correctly solved a hidden profile task more often than groups with a synchronous orientation, or groups that value similarity. Separatist groups repeated more unshared information than synchronous overall. Separatists also repeated more shared information than synchronous groups. Further, groups with a correct minority member also repeated more unshared information than groups with either a majority correct or no correct members. Results are discussed in terms of group focus and biases that affect the discussion of information.