Social Influence Factors in Group Brainstorming

PAULUS摘要组织和行业中的团队经常开会，就重要问题或议题产生想法。有时，这样的团队会采用头脑风暴的方法，在一种不加批判的氛围中，他们试图产生尽可能多的想法，而不考虑质量。据推测，这种方法将产生大量的想法和一些高质量的想法。然而，研究表明，头脑风暴小组产生的想法更少，高质量的想法也比同样数量的个人头脑风暴少。研究者最近的研究提供了证据，社会影响因素可能在互动群体的表现中起着关键作用。在互动群体中，个体有一种相互匹配的趋势。在实验室小组中，以前不认识的成员，表现不佳的成员似乎也比表现出色的成员有更大的影响。社会影响模型表明，头脑风暴小组表现不佳的部分原因是他们倾向于制定低绩效规范或标准。另一方面，有生产力的群体成员的存在可能会刺激其他群体成员更有生产力。在几个由四个人组成的头脑风暴小组的实验中，两个参与者产生想法的能力会有所不同。在某些情况下，这两个参与者将能够产生许多想法，而在其他情况下，他们将只能产生很少的想法。预计同事活动率的变化将影响其他参与者在头脑风暴会议期间以及随后与新参与者的会议中的活动水平。这一系列的研究将增加我们对团队头脑风暴和团队任务绩效过程的理解。当团队成员将自己的智力资源与其他人的智力资源结合起来，试图实现某种产品或目标时，很可能会出现在群体头脑风暴中观察到的社会过程。由于科学和工业中的许多创意产生都涉及群体互动，因此这一系列研究将为影响这些群体的生产力和创造力的因素提供重要信息。这项研究的结果可能会提出提高团队在这类任务上的效率的方法。

9319999 PAULUS ABSTRACT Groups in organizations and industry often meet to generate ideas about important problems or issues. Sometimes such groups use brainstorming procedures in which they try to generate as many ideas as possible without concern for quality in a noncritical atmosphere. It is presumed that such an approach will yield both large numbers of ideas and a number of high quality ones. However, research has demonstrated that brainstorming groups generate fewer ideas and fewer high quality ideas than a comparable number of individuals brainstorming alone. Recent studies by the investigator have provided evidence that social influence factors may play a critical role in the performance of interactive groups. There is a tendency for individuals in interactive groups to match each others' performance. In laboratory groups with previously unacquainted members, there also appears to be a tendency for the low performing members to have a greater impact than high performing ones. The social influence model suggests that the poor performance of brainstorming groups results in part from their tendency to develop low performance norms or standards. On the other hand, the presence of productive group members may stimulate the other group members to be more productive. In several experiments using brainstorming groups of four individuals, the ability of two of the participants to generate ideas will be varied. In some conditions these two participants will be able to generate many ideas, and in other conditions they will be able to generate only a few ideas. It is expected that the variation in rate of co-worker activity will influence the activity level of the other participants during the brainstorming session as well as in a subsequent session with new participants. This series of studies will increase our understanding of the processes involved in group brainstorming and group task performance in general. It is likely that the social processes observed in group brainstorming will occur whenever group members combine their intellectual resources with those of others in an attempt to achieve some product or goal. Since much idea generation in science and industry involves group interaction, this series of studies will provide important information about the factors that influence both the productivity and creativity of such groups. The results of this research may suggest ways to enhance the effectiveness of groups on such tasks.