Missing Links Problems and Participation in Collective Decisions

集体决策中的缺失环节问题和参与

• 批准号: 1124367
• 负责人: Garold Stasser
• 金额: $ 39.99万
• 依托单位: Miami University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-01 至 2015-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124367&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Missing; Links; Problems; Participation; Collective

In this project the Principal Investigators will explore how shared meta-knowledge about members' access to information affects participation in collective decisions and how participation rates affect performance on missing links problems. Missing links problems arise when there is a small set of critical information that is known to only one or a few and collective performance depends on these people contributing the critical information. Moreover, others need to ascribe validity to the information and competence to the messenger. The proposed research is guided by the idea that allocating speaking opportunities is a social coordination problem. Participation in group deliberations is characteristically unequal. Some members participate more than others. Existing evidence suggests that the extraverted, dominant, and verbally facile participate frequently but that these traits are not typically associated with knowing more or having expert knowledge. Compounding the problem, high participators are often judged by their peers to be the most competent and knowledgeable. Thus, members who participate frequently are seen as competent which serves to sustain their high rates of participation and enhance their influence. To coordinate participation effectively, members need valid and salient cues to orchestrate the provision and acceptance of speaking opportunities. The investigators will conduct five studies of groups working on missing links problems and reanalyze one set of archival data obtained from a leadership training institute. The explicitness and completeness of meta-knowledge will be varied and the studies will employ several types of tasks: estimation problems, crime mysteries, and quantitative reasoning problems. In these studies, critical information will be given to one or two members; this set of critical information will be necessary to integrate properly the information that all members have. Additionally, in several of the studies, groups will solve several missing link problems with similar structures and receive performance feedback after each problem. The goal is to assess whether participation allocation and collective performance improves with experience of working together in a stable task environment. In addition to collective performance measures, the investigators will record how frequently members participate and what information they contribute. Participants will also rate each others? levels of participation, task-relevant knowledge and competence, and influence after completing the collective tasks. In terms of broader impacts, this research will identify conditions that improve the ability of groups to consider and use critical information in making decisions. Chronicles of failed decision making often identify as a contributing factor failures to communicate and integrate a set of critical information ? in everyday vernacular "failures to connect the dots." For example, the failure to prevent the ?underwear bomber? from boarding a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day, 2009, has been attributed to the failure to disseminate information from the bomber's father and British intelligence within the intelligence community. This in an example of a missing links problem. The proposed studies will identify conditions under which task-relevant knowledge, more than extraversion and social dominance, determine who contributes and who is influential. Because small groups often make important decisions in government and organizations, the proposed work has implications for decision making effectiveness across a wide range of applications from identification of terrorist threats to the prevention of disasters to solving design and technical problems. The proposed research will lay the conceptual and empirical groundwork for designing interventions that reduce the chances of failures to detect missing links in small group decisions.

在这个项目中，首席研究员将探讨关于成员获取信息的共享元知识如何影响集体决策的参与，以及参与率如何影响缺失环节问题的绩效。当只有一个或少数人知道一小部分关键信息，而集体绩效取决于提供关键信息的这些人时，就会出现缺失链接问题。此外，其他人需要将信息的有效性归因于信使的能力。本研究的指导思想是，分配发言机会是一个社会协调问题。参与小组讨论的特点是不平等的。一些成员比其他成员参与得更多。现有的证据表明，外向、主导和语言流畅的人经常参与，但这些特征通常与了解更多或拥有专业知识无关。使问题更加复杂的是，高参与度的人常常被同事认为是最有能力和知识最渊博的人。因此，经常参加的成员被视为有能力，这有助于保持其高参与率并增强其影响力。为了有效地协调参与，成员需要有效和显著的线索来协调提供和接受发言机会。调查人员将对研究缺失环节问题的小组进行五项研究，并重新分析从一家领导力培训机构获得的一组档案数据。元知识的明确性和完整性将是多种多样的，研究将采用几种类型的任务：估计问题，犯罪谜团和定量推理问题。在这些研究中，关键信息将提供给一两个成员；这组关键信息对于正确集成所有成员拥有的信息是必要的。此外，在一些研究中，小组将解决几个结构相似的缺失环节问题，并在每个问题后获得绩效反馈。目的是评估在稳定的任务环境中共同工作的经验是否会改善参与分配和集体绩效。除了集体绩效衡量之外，调查人员还将记录成员参与的频率和他们提供的信息。参与者也会互相评价。参与程度、与任务相关的知识和能力，以及完成集体任务后的影响力。就更广泛的影响而言，这项研究将确定提高群体在决策中考虑和使用关键信息的能力的条件。失败决策的编年史通常被认为是一个促成因素，即未能沟通和整合一组关键信息。用日常用语来说就是“没有把事情联系起来”。例如，未能防止？内衣轰炸机?在2009年圣诞节登上一架从阿姆斯特丹飞往底特律的航班时发生的恐怖袭击，被认为是由于未能在情报界传播炸弹袭击者父亲和英国情报机构的信息。这是一个缺少链接问题的例子。拟议的研究将确定在哪些条件下，与任务相关的知识，而不是外向性和社会支配性，决定谁做出贡献，谁有影响力。因为在政府和组织中，小团体经常做出重要的决策，所以建议的工作对从识别恐怖主义威胁到预防灾难到解决设计和技术问题的广泛应用中的决策效率具有影响。拟议的研究将为设计干预措施奠定概念和实证基础，以减少在小团体决策中发现缺失环节的失败机会。